(3 poems)
by Frank Meintjies
Cambodia
In Hao Lao, light shines through the death
Through the eyes of shackles
Stories tie-dyed in the colour of flags,
Stories moored by flagpoles. Flagpoles like stakes.
Prison built by the French.
run by administrators imbibing coffee – superior coffee – and
eating croissants. Dons at
creating and raising stakes; experts in expertise
and battering rams against our spirit world.
Iron shackles anchored to bed-frames
no sleepwalking to shores of freedom.
In the centre of a room: a guillotine.
The next day, I meet Vuth
He is steeped in memory work
He wants to know, ‘When will words like
never again truly mean never.’ He reveres Mandela; we
doff our hats, proverbially, but
he wonders
how are we really doing; are South Africans
really conversing? We rabbit on: how the story
goes from prisons to museums. Can trauma
bridge us to democracy? In 1975, this Phnom Penh was
a ghostly town. Someone like Vuth
would be taken to the fields, to work. Now
new-coin bright, now straggly and grit-lined, it’s
filled with youth, beeping tuk-tuks, tourists. I slide
a beaded flag, stamp-sized and pinnable
across the table. We rise, exchange wan smiles and hug.
The storm, Krotoa’s ally
I am the storm, I am the
sea’s reflection, it’s other self
I watch as (in these rough
natal days) this little child is swept up
as dust with a broom
trod on, as the mud & grass
at your fort
This is krotoa’s world
why is it so streaked with shadows
why is it so laden with cracked leaves,
exploding patterns, ripples of shadows
in the golden light
on many nights I wash up
mighty waves against your shores
seeking to agitate your dreams
trying to seed a new song &
a new warmth in your veins
this child who can interpret my moods
who reads the plants
deciphers the grunts and glares of men –
in your grinding words & downward gaze
are you trying to break our spirit?
now what is left?
the futility of broken bracelets; of
khoi clothes torn off her
and replaced with garments of
the ‘company’
and what will you learn?
I, the tempest; the swirling belly
of the cloud
I churn your dreams
when you puff up, cramp your gut
I rouse long buried truth from embers
I burn a light though your bones
even down the ages
This Hand
these fingers broken in many parts –
knuckled, buckled
as i try to give
a segment
to so much that needs so much
to plug gaps, broken fences
small cracks in dreams
this hand broken (or sprained
temporarily lame or momentarily inflamed)
by pen, by welding machine, by hammer or
drenched in turpentine
as i sought for bread
to fill this hollow, this basic need
hardened & coarsened
by these times, these truths
this black hand —once no clasping with white
now: shaking in peace
& what of all that’s been lost
in the fire
what of singed hair, smoke-stained skin,
streaked eyes
we turn those into memories
that sit snugly or roughly
in a patterned frame
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