Poem
Kelwyn Sole
DREAM OR RESPONSE
DREAM OR RESPONSE
DREAM OR RESPONSE
Throughout your gaunt life one nightmare recurs, over and over.You are at your parent’s home: palatial, double-storeyed, like none your parents ever could have owned. It doesn\'t matter: they have vanished and left you there, after sprinkling promises of return. Or maybe it’s your house, and your own partner who has left. Or friends. A consensus of absence.
Shortly after their going, you realise you are not alone. The house is large; and night has thrown a blanket down that muffles all the sounds you know. Even cars whispering along an adjacent thoroughfare accentuate a lack of noise surrounding you.
And you own too many windows, rooms, electric lights that must declare your silhouette to eyes without: eyes with a need to cause – to watch – your hurt or dying for reasons you can only guess. You realise you have not checked whether every door is locked, every window clenched quite tight enough; each entrance remembered. The eyes are patient: they will wait until your vigilance unravels into the deep faith of your sleeping.
This dream mars childhood. It pinches its fingers into your life, at least twice a year; and will until your death.
In the mirror of memory comes recognition. A small child, left on your own in the house of your birth by your family as they popped next door, you played on, unmindful of the sounds of crickets and distant human laughter rustling familiarly through the hot, windless highveld night. Suddenly, without cause, the curtains of every window blew inwards, violently, and all together. You sat dead still; then raised your glance slowly, warily, to what might be outside. And recognised a gathering ambush: flickering shadows, and the grasping outline of trees and bushes; until for the first time in your life you intuited what malice was. Along with a wisdom you never have been able to put into effect.
The only place safe would be outside in that dark, yourself.
© 2006, Kelwyn Sole
From: Land Dreaming
Publisher: UKZN Press, Pietermaritzburg
From: Land Dreaming
Publisher: UKZN Press, Pietermaritzburg
Poems
Poems of Kelwyn Sole
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DREAM OR RESPONSE
Throughout your gaunt life one nightmare recurs, over and over.You are at your parent’s home: palatial, double-storeyed, like none your parents ever could have owned. It doesn\'t matter: they have vanished and left you there, after sprinkling promises of return. Or maybe it’s your house, and your own partner who has left. Or friends. A consensus of absence.
Shortly after their going, you realise you are not alone. The house is large; and night has thrown a blanket down that muffles all the sounds you know. Even cars whispering along an adjacent thoroughfare accentuate a lack of noise surrounding you.
And you own too many windows, rooms, electric lights that must declare your silhouette to eyes without: eyes with a need to cause – to watch – your hurt or dying for reasons you can only guess. You realise you have not checked whether every door is locked, every window clenched quite tight enough; each entrance remembered. The eyes are patient: they will wait until your vigilance unravels into the deep faith of your sleeping.
This dream mars childhood. It pinches its fingers into your life, at least twice a year; and will until your death.
In the mirror of memory comes recognition. A small child, left on your own in the house of your birth by your family as they popped next door, you played on, unmindful of the sounds of crickets and distant human laughter rustling familiarly through the hot, windless highveld night. Suddenly, without cause, the curtains of every window blew inwards, violently, and all together. You sat dead still; then raised your glance slowly, warily, to what might be outside. And recognised a gathering ambush: flickering shadows, and the grasping outline of trees and bushes; until for the first time in your life you intuited what malice was. Along with a wisdom you never have been able to put into effect.
The only place safe would be outside in that dark, yourself.
From: Land Dreaming
DREAM OR RESPONSE
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