Hospital Night

for my father in a coma at Groote Schuur hospital

It's been only two days
and already I can find my way
in the dark:
unlock the car,
turn the key,
drive up the hill
to the hospital.

The corridors gleam white,
the people let me through, any time.
I know the way to the ICU
I know the smell as you enter the room
I know the way to where
the world's contracted:
this bed where my love lies.

Your face is quiet, softened
by this long sleep
among the machines.
Your body is familiar,
blood of my blood
on the sheets.
But I know nothing of this big silence,
with only the sound of the ventilator
breathing your broken chest.

I come this way
in the middle of the night
to stand here lost
on the shore
of a white bed
singing the songs you taught me,
singing the tune you sang when I cried,
calling your name
into the low hum
of the hospital's sanitary efficiency.

The specialist says:
'What you're doing is fine.
But we have to inject a note of reality
into all this.'
What does he mean?
Another injection?
A more real world
beyond these walls?

My reality is
I can't see clearly
beyond the simple light
of pain's completeness.
Beyond this bed,
a mist, a dream.
Nothing else is.

I sing to you
from the shore of the bed
but you are far at sea.
And though I know
these songs of home
may never reach you,
this singing is all I can do.

__________
previously published in: Leon de Kock & Ian Tromp, eds.
The Heart in Exile: South African Poetry, 1990-1995
(London: Penguin, 1996) 221-3.

Seven words of the woman to the morning

    1.
   
Cold wind     cool wind
breathe away night

    2.

Sky     blue     day
seven birds are flying

    3.

Car smell     train noise
travel safely now

    4.

Words of people in the street
saying

    5.

"Morning, you have brushed away my dream"

    6.

Sun lighting the leaves
light me today

    7.

Heart singing the words
burn away fear

A Small Wind, Breathing

Breathing in, cold sky enters the chest
Breathing out, steam puffs white

Breathing in, the smell of buses in the morning
Breathing out, the late roses are pink and yellow

Breathing in, the roots of the trees grow under the house
Breathing out, each leaf exhales

Breathing in, sun rises over the power station
Breathing out, golden clouds

Breathing in, fear holds the belly
Breathing out, grey seagulls

Breathing in, pain opens in the heart
Breathing out, someone is making breakfast

Breathing in, the touch of hands is warm
Breathing out, a smile

Breathing in, cool space
Breathing out, warm

Breathing in, the skin is porous, receiving light
Breathing out, a small wind moves


_{__________}
previously published in: Leon de Kock & Ian Tromp, eds.
The Heart in Exile: South African Poetry, 1990-1995
(London: Penguin, 1996) 224.