Summer by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes
Summer
by Rethabile Masilo
More alien to us is what flows
into plant stalk and stem at first,
then in the long-legged flesh of girls
who are the prophets of its coming,
hats like asters in the light.
Mother says we in the tropics are blessed by it,
she says one day just as crickets
stopped singing, dawn opened
our palms into its light
and we, dumbfounded, loved the earth.
She startled the world by singing
a melody, a 3-step beat
her voice carried to the street.
But here it is, hanging above
like a naked bath bulb
in the wet afternoon.
Picnic basket, shawl. We are
at the shore of kites and breezes,
a volleyball field on the sand.
A dying Portuguese-man-of-war.
We spread ourselves to eat and read
poems by Kozain and Philp,
trying to stop love drowning
and washing up on the shore
like a fish
into plant stalk and stem at first,
then in the long-legged flesh of girls
who are the prophets of its coming,
hats like asters in the light.
Mother says we in the tropics are blessed by it,
she says one day just as crickets
stopped singing, dawn opened
our palms into its light
and we, dumbfounded, loved the earth.
She startled the world by singing
a melody, a 3-step beat
her voice carried to the street.
But here it is, hanging above
like a naked bath bulb
in the wet afternoon.
Picnic basket, shawl. We are
at the shore of kites and breezes,
a volleyball field on the sand.
A dying Portuguese-man-of-war.
We spread ourselves to eat and read
poems by Kozain and Philp,
trying to stop love drowning
and washing up on the shore
like a fish
Comments
"What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity." — Jean Paul Richter
Vincent Van Gogh: "If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
I am the child who survived a Third World War in a dysfunctional house and upbringing to become a poet. Why does the poet write? Perhaps to erase discrimination and regret, perhaps not to remember the kingdoms and realms and dimensions of sadness anymore. Perhaps I write not to accept or embrace or carry the emptiness that is ingrained within my soul, perhaps I write not to be defined by the solitary nature and unpredictable instinct of putting pen to paper, sorry, putting sword to paper. Rethabile Masilo is the kind of poet who writes not only what I like, but what I love to remember. It is not just poems about seeking or poems on longing and grief and loneliness and despair, but there is also insight and wisdom and immense gratitude. Dear Rethabile Masilo, thank you for being you, thank you for being a poet.
Thank you to the poet, the man who is both husband and father, a family man for being a point of light in my life, who is more of a brother to me than my own brother. To Rethabile Masilo, the poet. To your life, to your poetry. I sing your praises.
The sea in me is eternally grateful for the sea in you, my brother. The abyss from where all poems originate from.