Soom, South Africa, Ordovician era, 444 million years ago
In the hem of the Cederberg,
a "mysterious predator. . . . identified . . . only . . . by the traces it leaves behind . . . broken, crunched fragments. . . .
feeds on . . . Promissum pulchrum,
the creature of the 'beautiful promise'."*
So what else is new?
The enemies of promise have long abounded here! RISE Mzansi!**
*Thomas Halliday, Otherlands: A Journey through Earth's Extinct Worlds (New York: Random House, 2022), p. 244.
Updated: Dec 28, 2023
In the Great Karoo, sometime in the early 1950s
For my grandson Joseph Lin Dreyer, born November 11, 2023
Working the shop, at twelve, I sold
Sunrise Location's young scions
toffees (Velvets, Wilson's), giving
the boys a farthing's change per head.
"Dankie, Kleinbaas,”* the kids all said
—not feeling, I suppose, that bold.
Wilson's two a penny, Velvet
four, then desiderated sweets
at Dreyer's Handy Market store,
alas, our grocery no more:
it's a Pick n Pay Hyper outlet
now, selling what you have to get.
Libra, solidus, denarius,
"£.s.d."** to me; I didn't fuss
over farthings in a tickey
but wait a bit: Wag net ’n bietjie!***
twenty bob, and you'd got a quid.
No big deal if you did like us!
Had I still but got a farthing
of that lost pretty penny sum,
I’d bequeath it to my grandson,
revealing to him at leisure
the return for toffee treasure
in "Then"—my sometime thing.
So, my grandson lives in Shanghai;
I riff on 1952—
just distantly remembered, true,
though I was then as good as new;
good people asked a heartfelt "Why?"
—and had not so succumbed to sigh.
Wouldn't trade for what's on now.
It tots stuff up all wrong. Nohow!
*“Dankie, Kleinbaas” = “Thanks, Little Master."
**£.s.d. = "pounds, shillings, and pence." Pronounced “el-es-dee." The £ symbol is an L for libra, pound—colloquially, a "quid." The "tickey" was a thrupenny bit; the shilling was called a "bob."
***"Wag net ’n bietjie!" = "Just wait a little bit!"
Christmas 2023
For M-R
Maintenant l’étape est brève
Qui conduit au Pays noir.
Séché, le rosier du rêve
Qu’arrosait le jeune espoir.
--Amélie Murat
Mon âme sœur est peut-être elle,
ma bien-aimée, ma flamme jumelle.
So spirit says, but mind thinks, well . . .
How can you ever really tell?
The trick must be to take the chance:
Not to retreat must mean advance.
What lives must move—or plainly try,
Despite a dreamer's running dry.
Christmas 2023