Isobel Dixon

In summer when the Christmas beetles
filled each day with thin brass shrilling,
heat would wake you, lapping at the sheet,
and drive you up and out into the glare
to find the mulberry's sweet shade
or watch ants marching underneath the guava tree.

And in the house Mommy would start
the daily ritual, whipping curtains closed,
then shutters latched against the sun
and when you crept in, thirsty, from the garden,
the house would be a cool, dark cave,

an enclave barricaded against light
and carpeted with shadow, still
except the kitchen where the door was open
to nasturtiums flaming at the steps
while on the stove the pressure cooker chugged
in tandem with the steamy day.

And in the evenings when the sun had settled
and crickets started silvering the night,
just home from school, smelling of chalk and sweat,
Daddy would do his part of it, the checking,
on the front verandah, of the scientific facts.

Then if the temperature had dropped enough
the stays were loosened and the house undressed
for night. Even the front door wide now
for the slightest breeze, a welcoming
of all the season's scents, the jasmine,
someone else's supper, and a neighbour's voice -

out walking labradors, the only time of day
for it, this time of year. How well the world
was ordered then. These chill machines
don't do it half as true, the loving regulation
of the burning days. Somehow my judgment isn't quite
as sure when faced with weather-signs. Let me come home
to where you watch the skies and keep things right.



For Ann and Harwood
...

I'm not the kind who treasures
love notes in the sand, laid bare
for the lobstered swimsuit mob

to stare at, for the tide to lick
away. I want a token,
solid, in my hand. Something

with staying power, not easily lost
or broken. Do you understand?
You murmur, puzzled by my greed,

"What is it that you want a thing
to show for, anyway?" You may
well ask. It's just a zero,

universal emptiness. It
brings forth nothing except need,
and the truth is, souvenirs

won't do the trick: no poseur
snaps, no neat, insipid
diaries, no sickly rock,

unusual pebbles, musty shells. I want
the shining cliffs, the posh hotel,
the whole shebang. The waiters

running across emerald lawns,
their heavy silver platters
raised in skilful hands. I want

the tacky postcard carousels,
the smugly clinking tills, the dumpy
women sweating at their counters

every summer, summer-long,
as well. I want their oily husbands
grinning now from ear to ear -

I am the sea come to swallow the pier.
...

I'm sorry to see
my mosquito bumps fade:
the love bites of a continent,
marks of its hot embrace.

If anything is dark,
it's this damp island
with its sluggish days,
its quieter, subtler ways
of drawing blood.
...

When I was young and there were five of us,
all running riot to my mother's quiet despair,
our old enamel tub, age-stained and pocked
upon its griffin claws, was never full.

Such plenty was too dear in our expanse of drought
where dams leaked dry and windmills stalled.
Like Mommy's smile. Her lips stretched back
and anchored down, in anger at some fault -

of mine, I thought - not knowing then
it was a clasp to keep us all from chaos.
She saw it always, snapping locks and straps,
the spilling: sums and worries, shopping lists

for aspirin, porridge, petrol, bread.
Even the toilet paper counted,
and each month was weeks too long.
Her mouth a lid clamped hard on this.

We thought her mean. Skipped chores,
swiped biscuits - best of all
when she was out of earshot
stole another precious inch

up to our chests, such lovely sin,
lolling luxuriant in secret warmth
disgorged from fat brass taps,
our old compliant co-conspirators.

Now bubbles lap my chin. I am a sybarite.
The shower's a hot cascade
and water's plentiful, to excess, almost, here.
I leave the heating on.

And miss my scattered sisters,
all those bathroom squabbles and, at last,
my mother's smile, loosed from the bonds
of lean, dry times and our long childhood.
...

She comes swimming to you, following
da Gama's wake. The twisting Nile
won't take her halfway far enough.

No, don't imagine sirens - mermaid
beauty is too delicate and quick.
Nor does she have that radiance,

Botticelli's Venus glow. No golden
goddess, she's a southern
selkie-sister, dusky otter-girl

who breasts the cold Benguela, rides
the rough Atlantic swell, its chilly
tides, for leagues and leagues.

Her pelt is salty, soaked. Worn out,
she floats, a dark Ophelia, thinking
what it feels like just to sink

caressed by seaweed, nibbled by
a school of jewel-plated fish.
But with her chin tipped skyward

she can't miss the Southern Cross
which now looks newly down on her,
a buttress for the roof of her familiar

hemisphere. She's nearly there.
With wrinkled fingertips, she strokes
her rosary of ivory, bone and horn

and some black seed or stone
she can't recall the name of,
only knows its rubbed-down feel.

And then she thanks her stars,
the ones she's always known,
and flips herself, to find her rhythm

and her course again. On, southwards,
yes, much further south than this.
This time she'll pay attention

to the names - not just the English,
Portuguese and Dutch, the splicings
and accretions of the years. She'll search

for first names in that Urworld, find
her heart-land's mother tongue.
Perhaps there's no such language,

only touch - but that's at least a dialect
still spoken there. She knows when she
arrives she'll have to learn again,

so much forgotten, lost. And when
they put her to the test she fears
she'll be found wanting, out of step.

But now what she must do is swim,
stay focused on each stroke,
until she feels the landshelf

far beneath her rise, a gentle slope
up to the rock, the Cape,
the Fairest Cape. Her Mother City

and its mountain, waiting, wrapped
in veils of cloud and smoke.
Then she must concentrate, dodge

nets and wrack, a plastic bag afloat -
a flaccid, shrunk albino ray -
until she's close enough to touch

down on the seabed, stumble
to the beach - the glistening sand
as great a treasure as her Milky Way -

fall on her knees and plant a kiss
and her old string of beads,
her own explorer's cross

into the cruel, fruitful earth at last.
She's at your feet. Her heart
is beating fast. Her limbs are weak.

Make her look up. Tell her she's home.
Don't send her on her way again.
...

You've no idea, those proteas
you gave me - somehow scavenged bunch -
how those huge soft-furred goblet flowers,
are travelling with me, still.

There was a time I wouldn't have thanked you
for such stubborn heads: hard-hearted,
stiffly-ranged, supremely practical,
the nationalists' tough bloom -

I hated them, so vulgarly
indigenous. Now, roses, snowdrops,
hollyhocks, yes, these were flowers
one could call beautiful,

would plant and nurture, even twist
into your hair. These are too huge
and dense for that. What use are they -
unscented, heavy, blunt?

You filled my arms with them, that night,
the upstairs restaurant. You made
the waitress light a fire against
the Cape's mild winter,

warm and beautiful enough for me,
the wrong end of my holiday
back home. But I was glad of it,
light leaping to our table,

how the fire kept answering your gift,
its milder glow - still flames propped
in a silver bucket - as we laughed,
speaking in Afrikaans

and English, hardly thinking which
was which. Past midnight, then,
my B & B's prim basin swelled,
a southern coronation,

an astonishment. In daylight
I leaned over them, using - your word -
aandagtigheid, attentiveness;
slowly absorbing

all that I had missed, their delicate
geometries. The untranslated
captures it: at once both felted,
soft, yet also guttural:

the palate tongued, first slowly, then
a final snap, and in-between
a purring, gently, in the throat.
The woody stems, those rose-

tipped assegais, the pale cream
inner cone, with fronds as tender
as lambs' eyelashes. I stood there,
on the chilly, gleaming

tiles, stroking the hearts of flowers.
I couldn't bring them back with me;
even such silent aliens
are dangerous. I chose

to split them - single sticks holding
their own exploding heads - left them
with loved ones, who, familiar,
might also feel contempt.

But I'm a convert now. Treasure
my photograph, a clumsy shot
that lops me at the knees, but shows
what matters: mammoth blooms


cupped in my arms. The elbow crooked,
as when I'm pictured cradling
my godchild niece; the weight about
the same. So are we anchored,

always, even from afar. So,
in the night, scented with roses here,
I feel the tug - those ancient stems,
breathing a fragrant sap,
come reaching down my spine.You've no idea, those proteas
you gave me - somehow scavenged bunch -
how those huge soft-furred goblet flowers,
are travelling with me, still.

There was a time I wouldn't have thanked you
for such stubborn heads: hard-hearted,
stiffly-ranged, supremely practical,
the nationalists' tough bloom -

I hated them, so vulgarly
indigenous. Now, roses, snowdrops,
hollyhocks, yes, these were flowers
one could call beautiful,

would plant and nurture, even twist
into your hair. These are too huge
and dense for that. What use are they -
unscented, heavy, blunt?

You filled my arms with them, that night,
the upstairs restaurant. You made
the waitress light a fire against
the Cape's mild winter,

warm and beautiful enough for me,
the wrong end of my holiday
back home. But I was glad of it,
light leaping to our table,

how the fire kept answering your gift,
its milder glow - still flames propped
in a silver bucket - as we laughed,
speaking in Afrikaans

and English, hardly thinking which
was which. Past midnight, then,
my B & B's prim basin swelled,
a southern coronation,

an astonishment. In daylight
I leaned over them, using - your word -
aandagtigheid, attentiveness;
slowly absorbing

all that I had missed, their delicate
geometries. The untranslated
captures it: at once both felted,
soft, yet also guttural:

the palate tongued, first slowly, then
a final snap, and in-between
a purring, gently, in the throat.
The woody stems, those rose-

tipped assegais, the pale cream
inner cone, with fronds as tender
as lambs' eyelashes. I stood there,
on the chilly, gleaming

tiles, stroking the hearts of flowers.
I couldn't bring them back with me;
even such silent aliens
are dangerous. I chose

to split them - single sticks holding
their own exploding heads - left them
with loved ones, who, familiar,
might also feel contempt.

But I'm a convert now. Treasure
my photograph, a clumsy shot
that lops me at the knees, but shows
what matters: mammoth blooms


cupped in my arms. The elbow crooked,
as when I'm pictured cradling
my godchild niece; the weight about
the same. So are we anchored,

always, even from afar. So,
in the night, scented with roses here,
I feel the tug - those ancient stems,
breathing a fragrant sap,
come reaching down my spine.
...

sweet fallacy the heart
this heaving muscle glistens darkly
something like a toad
...