Somewhere
In a parallel universe
You and I hold each other
on a dance floor

Your back under your shirt, in my hands
Your breath in my ear
My heartbeat in the music

Leon de Kock
THE WALL

The man stands at the wall
writing.
The wall is his life.
He stands and he writes, fervently.
All day, all the days of his life,
his friends & enemies can see the writing
on the wall,




Honor Sargeant
FREEHOLD

Now nothing stands
between God and me
except me,
arms akimbo and on guard
shouting      No Lord!
Do not touch or cross the line
that I have drawn
about my small freehold patch


Smiling,
He pitched his tent, sat down
and whiled away the time
tracing teasing patterns
on the sand,
writing poems upside down,
but just too far
for me to read
from where I stand.

Sujata Bhatt
DURBAN: A VISIT TO THE BOTANICAL GARDENS

Tatamkhulu Afrika walks ahead-

He is being followed
    by nine ibises:

Hadedah -                         
    Hadedah - I learn the name.       

                Ruth Everson
                FATTER THAN LIFE
I do not move.    
                One day when it’s not midnight,
Red hibiscus keeps me guessing -
                I’m gonna dance under a holy mackerel sky,
I am the one who watches.
                I’m gonna jitterbug my bellybody in defiant:
Behind me
I can hear the pipal tree -
                Fatter than life
                Got no rhythm
                Can’t stop me now
                Can’t laugh me now,
                Space jumps, jetês and absurd arabesques
                One night when it’s burning bright midday,
                I’m gonna love off the fat of the land,
                I’m gonna feed my heartbody in a defiant:
                Fill this space
                Heap my plate
                Can’t stop me now
                Can’t laugh me now,
                Enourmous rumbleroar that’s me!

Adam Schwartzman
RHAPSODY

Say, Franz, that a fire advances up a match
like a flourescent tide, recalls the harbour, as Lusaka shines at night. That a match

bends after the fire like a swan’s neck, a small death.
That its sharp head shines

like a stone. That here we could start anywhere
and arrive. Jehova mystify me. Allah hold my head. Christ

sanctify Your name. Say, Franz, that the windows gape
like exit wounds. That the bone white pillars unravel

in tentacles, slipping in and out of stone. That every point unleashes
a dancing alphabet. That the longing eyes in the tiles

are like beans. That in Dakar the Arab clerics
knew a mystery. Allah sanctify Your name. Jehova

hold my head. Christ mystify me. Say,
Franz, that shafts of gold burst through the saints and virgins.

That the injured children’s brown tears are like melting flesh.
That on the floors map flow the ants in rifts.

That a penny-whistle threads the collonades of Maputo.
That all we are holding wants to let go. Christ

hold my head. Jehovah sanctify Your name. Allah mystify me.
Say, Franz, that we don’t know

what we know and aren’t what we seem. That the physical forms
are eliding with the words, and the rhymes

are rhyming internally. That all we are holding wants to let go.
That here we could start anywhere and arrive.

Jehova mystify me.
Allah hold my head. Christ sanctify Your name.

Leon de Kock
THE WALL (continued)

the message he leaves in the wake
of his wri-ting,
the one he struggles his whole life
to see, as he writes, desiring
that his writing should yield
into his future,

James Matthews
 last night
my eyes feasted
on the face of
    sujata
smiling at me
from the pages of
the new statesman
  her poetry in
     print
 taking me back
to mellowed time
 where writers and
painters congregated
     in a space
  not barricaded by
      borders
blocking entry into
each others mind
      sujata
her voice warm as
  summer's rain
brought comfort to
   pain speared
  into my being
   last night
  i fell asleep
with the words of
       sujata
  making merry
   in my mind
   celebratory
  phrases chiming
      sujata
   now wears the
    mantle of
     shadar
who is the lute

(sujata, who is the beloved
of michael augustin)

Michael Augustin
HERR-MR. KRÖGER
After years of tinkering, Mr. Kröger managed to develop
                                        Herr Kröger, dem es in jahrelanger
a time machine in which you can travel a full five
Tüftelei gelungen ist, eine Zeitmaschine zu entwickeln, mit deren
minutes into the past. He wishes to register his
Hilfe es möglich ist, um volle fünf Minuten in die Vergangenheit
invention at the patent office, but merely earns stormy
zurückzukehren, möchte seine Erfindung auf dem Patentamt
laughter from the ladies and gentlemen gathered there.
anmelden, erntet dort aber von den versammelten Damen und
In view of the millions of years that form the history of
Herren nur stürmisches Gelächter. Angesichts der mehrere         
man, he is chided, his so-called invention must be some                  Caroline Long
Milionen Jahre umfassenden Menscheitsgeschichte, so weist man  THE MOZART CAFÉ.
kind of joke.                                                                                     I think I'll pick me a poet
ihn zurecht, handele es sich bei seiner sogenannten Erfindung ja
Mr. Kröger shrugs his shoulders and points to a large                      at the Mozart Café,
wohl um einen Schertz.
mean-time clock. "In one twelfth of an hour," he says,                      down in Church Street,
Herr Kröger zuckt die Achseln und deutet auf die grosse                                         off Long
"we’ll talk again." And leaves the room at five to twelve                    someone who'll take
Normalzeituhr: “In einer Zwölftelstunde”, sagt er, “sprechen wir         me to the movies
on the dot.                                                                                       on Friday night
uns wieder.” Und verlässt den Raum um Punkt fünf vor zwölf.        
                                              
                    up at the Labia, off Orange.
                    I think I'll pick me a poet
.                   at the Mozart Café
                    from in among the Black
                                        Forest cakes,
                    down in Church Street off Long,
                    someone who'll have cinnamon cake and tea
                    with me on Saturday afternoon
                    and saw those dead branches.

                    I think I'll pick me a poet .
                    someone who'll buy me a bangle
                    at a market somewhere
                    out there on the Western
                                    tip of Africa ...
                    someone who'll stay forever
                    an image in the deep of my heart

(An English version of the originally German HERR KRÖGER appeared in Carapace * 23.
 The interlocking arrangement of the two versions is my own. R.M.)

Elaine M Pearson
THIS PAGE
There's distance between me and this page.
There's the tension of crossing borders.
Ideas form like cumuli, then break.
The lightning doesn't touch the earth.

I drove one hundred miles one night.
You weren't at the meeting place.
Afterwards you shook your head.
I should have known you wouldn't wait.

This page gives nothing back to me.
There's no mockery at my impress.
I am not going to write this page.
Your name is not  going to come on it.

Leon de Kock
THE WALL (continued)

...should unburden his days
of their resistance.
Always, he is looking ahead,
to his next sentence,
and always he leaves the writing
 on the wall.







Jon Stallworthy
SINDHI WOMAN

Barefoot through the bazaar,
and with the same undulant grace
as the cloth blown back from her face,
she glides with a stone jar
high on her head
and not a ripple in her tread.

Watching her cross erect
stones, garbage, excrement, and crumbs
of glass in the Karachi slums,
I, with my stoop, reflect
they stand most straight
who learn to walk beneath a weight.