Happy Birthday

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day -
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satelite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be

That hesitant figure, eddying away
like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give and take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire ones irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show -
How selfhood begins with a walking away
And love is proved in the letting go

(Cecil Day Lewis)

One of my favourites

I just love this poem by Ruth Miller. I used to read it a lot when I was younger, at varsity, and have sort of forgotten it exept for that last stanza which is so beautifull and haunting that I couldn't help but find myself reciting it from time to time, especially after meeting Ian...

Aspects of Love

I

Green things grow in the wrong places
They unfeather in the emphasis
On noughts in the sum.
Love is no logician
Hears the argument
Blandly, never to profit
by the Socratic method
And puts forth greenness on outlandish stone

II

Love? We should smother it
and push it up the chimney
He said, half meaning it
We know now what he intended
for finding love at their door
on a cold night, people - if they are wise
Will push it up the chimney into the smoke before
It wails at them with such clenched desire
As will bring into the quiet house
The significant ecstatic loss

III

On a high hill in the cold wind
on a sunless day
You brought me a bird seeking to unsay
its vulture moments
Though I was afraid
I felt its warmth undo my startled hand.

(Ruth Miller)

Cubes

I did this one last year when I had got fed up with doing the usual

stuff. She is not one of my favourites but it was nice to experiment a bit and it was fun. Might try it again when I get time to sketch. But probably not before I finish my exams in January...

Drama

Our drama group is having 'poetry and prose' evenings on the 10th and 11th of December. For prose I am going to be reading a thing I have put together from some of Kuki Galman's short stories. Very 'African'.
What poem to do has been a bit of a headache, I first tried some stuff out of 'Heart in Exile' and then I really worked hard on 'The Second Coming' by Yeats. My drama teacher said it suited my voice as it is quite a dark poem. But something just didn't feel right and so that is also not the one I will be doing. I have found the right poem - one that has been very very special to me for quite a long time. And especially this year.

Ja, so if you want to know which one it is then come to the drama evening... (Ja Waldo Pelser, JY ook!)