BEATIFUL IN BEAUFORT WEST Poem by Gert Vlok Nel

& you were beautiful in Beaufort West and I was so frightened and so frightingly in love with you & you & I had kissed on graves & on trains & on the back seats of Ford Fairlanes now you and your husband are both computer analysts & last winter you tried to cut both of your wrists & now you can't sleep anymore, can't laugh anymore, can't do anything for yourself, will never kiss me again

& your words were mooi mooi mooi also when you were smoking menthol cigarettes & said those sweet sweet things to me while you lay sweet sweet in my arms & I've exactly forgotten the exact words I only remember the smoke & the sweat in Beaufort West & your naked body under a cool cotton summer dress can't sleep anymore, can't laugh anymore, never do anything for each other again, never kiss each other again

& maybe it's like a story from the Huisgenoot, but one evening you suddenly pushed me away & looked at your face in the rear view mirror & said ‘maybe I should look happier' that evening I just couldn't get to sleep & the feeling that my heart would tear right out of my body & like a rowboat that's floating away on the river I could not sleep anymore, not laugh anymore, not do anything right again, never kiss you again

& the last memory I'll sing about is the night when you & I rode the milk train on and on into the night to the other side of the ding dong gong of the breakfast waiter passing in the corridor & this was my wake-up call my love, you said ‘wees asseblief life vir my' but I dreamed that we went to live in Beaufort West & I couldn't sleep anymore, couldn't laugh, couldn't do something like that anymore, will never kiss you again