Charl JF Cilliers
Charl JF Cilliers Poems
Nearby you see him in air
cavorting in twistings of light
that part of him that you share
...
No longer is there a train
that goes steaming by
and yet I still see the red coals glowing
against the morning sky.
...
I would turn the prow
to where it found the wind
rushing to fill the sails
with a shudder beneath my feet
...
Flower of Paradise
filled with nectars
so out of place here
on the rough
...
Would she ever admit
the dance is an illusion?
No, she would never think to quit,
...
later,
while he packs up
her clothes, morning sunlight’s
crumpled shadows he cannot fold
...
I sit on the beach
mending my nets
and watch the surfers
riding the waves,
...
Pain, that breaking
of the brittle shell of the heart
our only understanding
of all endings
...
sacred
places where I,
within them, within me,
seek to be always present in
...
Under the moon
the kiewiet cries
frantically out of tune
to focus the watcher’s eyes.
...
Thoughts obsessively hasten backwards, past
the months and years of falling
without sound, sinking fast in vast
depths, a fish’s gasping, silent calling!
...
Charl JF Cilliers Biography
I was born in Cape Town on 25/1/41 but moved away before the age of 18 months. My parents were divorced before I started school and the family moved virtually every year. I matriculated at Clapham High in Pretoria in 1958, qualified as an electronics lecturer at the Post Office Training Centre in Pretoria. Joined Parliament as a translator in 1968 and retired as Editor of Hansard in 1998, moving to the West Coast, where I am devoting myself to my writing.)
The Best Poem Of Charl JF Cilliers
Falcon
Perches momentarily in mid-flight,
wide-winged, on a crag of sunlight.
Catamarans down, soft as a last breath
of wind, and claws the shrill of death.
Charl JF Cilliers Comments
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4/23/2024 12:23:27 PM # 1.0.0.1119
REVIEWS: These poems convince as imaginative truths because of their hard core of compressed fact and feeling. Frequently they are based on precise observation of phenomena. But, though often metaphysical, they are not narrowly inward-looking. Everywhere evident is the writer’s sense of responsibility to words and to men. Obscurity is not courted, though some of the poems are not easy. Nothing is ‘easy’ in the pejorative sense of the word, and, in attempting to give a just account of them, one must try not to falsify the complexity of apparently simple utterances. Prof R Harnett on West-Falling Light En hoe verrassend is dié versameling “vergete verse” nie. ‘n Wye verskeidenheid van emosionele ervarings en versvorme met ‘n deurdagte taal- en prosodiese beheer sal die leser van dié ruim versameling deurgaans opval... daar is geen digterskap aan hierdie leser bekend wat so deurlopend en met soveel variasie met die spanning tussen lig en donker gemoeid bly nie. Dr Lucas Malan on Collected Poems 1960-2008 Die besonderse hantering van die prosodie, verrassende slotte en helder beelde imponeer keer op keer. Kyk hoe knap word rympatrone hanteer…Dis ‘n bundel waarin ‘n mens bewus word van die digter se komplekse verhouding met die digkuns… Prof Joan Hambidge on Collected Poems 1960-2008 It is Mr Cilliers’ second collection and his first for seven years. It brings together more than 50 poems published at different times in local literary journals, all noted for their high standards. And in this volume at least he never betrays those standards. He writes for the most part with a facile, fluid line that reads simply and easily. But do not be lulled by this surface fluency: Whatever depths of thought or flights of fancy inspired his lines, whatever ironies or mysteries are intended by them, these are exposed only when the poems are properly savoured. John Tucker on Has Winter No Wisdom Cilliers’ verse is frequently given to the contemplation of the forces – dynamic and destructive – at work in man and nature. Prof Ridley Beeton in the SABC programme New Voices