Season Poem (for Johannesburg)

1.

Another Winter; each is different

Each is fringed with last year’s

Arthritic twigs and blackened grass,

But each denies the past’s nostalgia.

With half an eye on next year’s possibilities,

Each day pursues the driven linearity

Which brings each to an inevitable death.

Always the conclusion escapes.

The trees plan new strategies,

More melancholy configurations

Another suggestion of beauty.

2.

Our measurements fail to capture

The logic of another season.

So we fail to understand;

There is no war between progress and regeneration.

Glass and concrete do not obscure the sun

And a warmer time brings no hope to silent pavements.

But a warmth returns –

The days stretch themselves, without anticipation.

Nor can we anticipate tomorrow

By homage to a dismembered or imagined past

Spring brings us no comfort.

3.

We run out of names,

So one year becomes another.

The sun of summer flings shadows as seeds.

They bear fruit, become the darkness

By which we know the light.

The roads are shadowless and sticky-hot

And lead to suburbs full of silence.

There, leisure falls to those

Who claim it as a right.

Harsh is the fear which penetrates their calm.

4.

Autumn draws together the myriad strands,

Forms a nexus;

A waiting.

As the days close they anticipate their deaths,

And so are like us, who give them names.

We fear the calling of the seasons to this point

Where nothing is inevitable.

For unlike theirs, the fading of another of our years

Is a presage of some ultimate conclusion;

Bloody or silent.