GOSPEL Poem by Maria van Daalen

1
In the beginning was the word and the word was grass. Bluegrass, from here to the Dragon Mountains, buoyantly bending like the long rolling waves of the deep sea. Golden grass, from the Dragon Mountains to Slave Bay, crackling like ripe corn during the dog days. And from Slave Bay up to here, where I stand, the ruddy plumes of the rooigras, tall after the rains on the savannah. The cheetah rests in the rooigras.


2
Hail thee, beauty,
ebb tide of love,
neap tide of the body.

Cool as the night in an aeroplane,
in and out breathes the sleep time,
night in the windows, a blue, swaying
darkness and the hatches open.
Boeing sails softly, almost at the bottom
of shivering sea water, deep reeling fathoms.
A hand waves along a window
with a ring of pink polyps and pearl oyster.
Cool is the journey, the infinite time
and the night is alive.

Hail thee, beauty,
burnt, scattered, dust
along the roadside.

Warm as the red colours of the earth,
fiery fertile with iron and clay,
wood colour and pine resin, flame,
extinguished along the dusty roads
a compass rose lies between two eyes precisely
a bullet wound flowers.

Hail thee, beauty,
white and gold in the bridal room,
cool and padded like a coffin.
Hail thee,
body in the rooigras.


3
The other cheetah / rises from the lair / and approaches.