‘The Snake’ and Other Poems

The Snake

I’ve been resisting narrative for years when I finally give in. It feels cold this morning. The heat wave is over. Bee-eaters circle beneath the clouds.

Yesterday a friend and I drove through the same storm in Limpopo, travelling from opposite directions. We didn’t meet but must have passed near Haenertsburg. Later it grew hot again. The clouds burned off. I drew even with the time.



I never believed it: this happened, I feel that way, maybe you’ll feel it too. Giraffes on the horizon, retreating into the valley from the midday sun. A Mozambique spitting cobra that doesn’t but could have. I’m too close. I’m too close without knowing it.

In the afternoon an elephant forces me to reverse over a river along a narrow causeway and keeps coming, I put a wheel off the edge into the muck and it keeps coming, I reverse up a narrow road cut through the embankment, it keeps coming, I am not good at backing up.



I can say I didn’t know what would happen when I fetched the knife from the kitchen, but I had an idea.
I held the stick, held fast the cord pulling tight the loop around its neck.

The next day we drove back over the mountain. Pulled off the pass, clear of blue gum trees snapping in the wind, and watched lightning strike in every direction. The car was too close to the sky. It was much later I learned that my friend was in the same storm, 300km from home.



Yes, it ended up dead, and it needn’t have. Spent the night bleeding out in a potjie pot. Summer keeps creatures quiet until well after dark. And then very active.

I couldn’t bear to lift the lid in the morning, before we left. Later I am sent a photo. Coiled and banded, salmon to black, the underside of its mouth like a cat’s.



Everything is panting. The yellow-billed oxpeckers on the ears of an old Cape buffalo. The buffalo. My veins go big and blue in the heat.

The storm Charlie Brown’s us from Phalaborwa all the way to Modimolle. The temperature sinks from 42C to 19 before rising again. I can’t write any of this until it is over.


Peak Hour

Slow boat, the car I’m piloting
through Randburg. Randburg,
which is amorphous and everywhere
   and endless. Who says poets don’t drive?
The ones in England, with their
public transport? Road that I’m on,
   Malibongwe, I feel ruts through the pedals,
pocked like the carpet of the moon.
The markings have all worn off;
a driver must guess about lanes.
   There’s a freedom in it. Swing wide
around the shuttling minibus taxis,
the waste-pickers in balaclavas riding their trolleys,
   the holes. Am I in control
or totally out of it? I take chances I would
   never usually. This is usually.


Palisade Specialist

You can’t help but imagine
Situations. We’d prefer you did. Prefer
Hot-rolled steel to cold-rolled,
Which is cheaper but easier to bend.
Three-spike, four-spike, seven-spike fence heads.
Shark tooth, devil’s fork. Rotational
Spikes, which are anti-climb.
Many failures, layers of madness
Were brought to bear on our expertise
And your customer needs. See-through,
Leaving nowhere to hide. Cost effective,
Compared to building a brick wall.
Electric fence topping available.
Because everything seems fine until it isn’t,
And then it really isn’t.
Will not work if you have small dogs.


Solar Installation Day

Sun stealers, coal savers. Workers on the roof
   and the Afrikaans foreman, smoking. Panels go up.

There is shouting. My attention is split between essential and non
   as the disorderly transition continues. From civic neglect

comes invention or tragedy. When load-shedding starts at 6pm,
   our lights hold steady. It wasn’t cheap.

This shift to sudden ignorance of the common plight,
   the powerlessness. We have joined a phalanx of the absented.

We’ll have much less to complain about, although we’ll still find things.
   What to do when hope is lost. Under the brightness of a blue supermoon

that registers a PV input of one watt,
   the sirens come too late. I can’t stop hearing them.