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Cape Town

POETRY

THE MUSEUMS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read696 views

For Sizwe Vilakazi

 

ROBBEN ISLAND, CAPE TOWN

 

Except when the Atlantic fog surprises,

from high ground in the city the island

is present like a leviathan,

its lights at night like white phosphorous,

a place of banishment since the first ships,

among seals and penguins.

 

DISTRICT SIX, CAPE TOWN

 

Razing its streets, clearing this cosmopolis

of Asians, atheists, Blacks, booksellers,

Buddhists, Christians, Coloureds, cooks, Hindus, Jews,

musicians, Muslims, seafarers, Whites,

this is what it was all about – the racial

myths, the scorn, the humiliation,

the torture, the killings – to justify

the theft of property.

 

APARTHEID, FREEDOM PARK, JOHANNESBURG

 

Beneath the Pillars of the Constitution,

in the gardens the weaver birds are knitting

their elaborate nests from grass and reeds

precariously over water.

 

Inside is the Mercedes workers hand built

for Mandela, and a BAE designed

troop-carrying Casspir, mine and bullet proof,

to patrol the townships.

 

HECTOR PIETERSON, ORLANDO WEST, SOWETO

 

When the school children took to the dirt streets

in their uniforms and walked as one

towards the dogs and the guns and the police,

did each of their rulers secretly know

they were finished – not then or that year

but in time however many they maimed,

and killed and tortured in front of cameras –

yet kept it to themselves? Did they believe

really that righteous anger would, could

be suppressed forever?

 

 

 

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POETRY

1967

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read538 views

While Che Guevara was shot in Bolivia,

Siegfried Sassoon died in his bed,

the US bombed Hanoi,

Biafra declared independence,

Israel gained the Golan Heights,

a heart was transplanted in Cape Town,

the Beatles sang ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’,

the Supremes ‘Love is here and now you’re gone’,

the Cartwrights roamed the Ponderosa,

the Cookie Monster ‘Sesame Street’,

‘The Prisoner’ confounded,

‘Jackanory’ revolved,

‘The Naked Ape’ sold,

‘Rosemary’s Baby’ appalled,

the Abortion Act was passed,

Spurs won the Cup,

the National Front was formed,

the pound was devalued,

there was you.

 

 

 

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POETRY

SEAFORTH BEACH, SIMONSTOWN, 2009

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read548 views

‘The essential characteristic of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common – and must have forgotten many things as well.’ What is a Nation? Ernest Renan

 

Near the restaurant’s toilets, there was a large

framed print of a photograph of the beach

full of day trippers from Cape Town by train

one Christmas/New Year break in the ’50s –

when it was Slegs Blankes/Whites Only.

The restaurant’s customers were still white,

the staff black – by Toyota taxis daily

from the townships. On the beach, that windy

September day, African Penguins –

erstwhile ‘Jackass’ – were braying at the surf.

A Southern Whale and its young rose close

inshore and blew… From the bedroom window

of our three star guest house we could see,

in the moonlight, a young black man lay down

to sleep on the grassy bank near the sea’s edge.

In the morning he had gone. A submarine

sailed from the naval base, sounding its horn.

We watched a mist roiling slowly towards us

and the dark kelp bobbing.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ROBBEN ISLAND

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read372 views


His cell, of course; breaking stones in the yard;

his endurance; his spirit; and his comrades’;

some warders and prisoners living there still,

in harmony, in freedom…

 

and these images:

 

the birds, teeming – African Penguins,

Crowned Cormorants, Cattle Egrets, Sacred Ibis;

 

part of the concrete wall of a cell block

made into a door on rails – ingenious, pointless;

 

Cape Town  and Table Mountain gilded in the soft,

southern sun – a mere seven miles away…

 

 

 

Note: ‘Robben Island’ will be one of the next two stories to be posted in early January on:

SYLVIA SELZER PHOTOGRAPHER/STORYTELLER.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

CECIL AND PRECIOUS

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read777 views

 

RHODES MEMORIAL
Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, © Sylvia Selzer 2009

 

‘Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambesi!’

Cecil Rhodes

 

I

 

Apparently, he loved the view from this spot –

the north east slopes of Table Mountain – indeed,

owned much of the foreground. The sycophants

of Cape Town built, with granite quarried

from the mountain itself, this monument –

with Doric columns and arcades (which he

so revered, apparently), bronze lions à la

Trafalgar Square and a pensive, almost

wistful, bust of Cecil, clergyman’s son,

diamond broker, chancer.

 

 

II

 

The wooden bench from which he so enjoyed

the view survives below the monument

and on which he might have preferred a brass plaque

but perhaps not. He bequeathed the mountainside

to the nation and so ensured its slopes

preserved. We brunched at the restaurant

among the pines. At the next table,

a Coloured waiter served an Asian man

and a Black woman Italian Tomato

Soup and Quiche of the Day.

 

The air was pellucid, alpine. Oddly,

a Marsh Harrier circled above us –

yet this was beautiful. The restaurant

suggested his wish had been achieved

though not, of course, quite as he intended!

Below were the airport, disused cooling towers,

the Guguletsu township and, out of sight,

beyond the mountains that bound the horizon,

his unrealised, longed for, imperial road

from the Cape  to Cairo.

 

 

III

 

When we returned to our rented villa

in Newlands, Precious, our maid, was leaving

to catch her train for Guguletsu.

This was her first time at the villa

so she was nervous. She would be home before

nightfall but she must walk through the dark

in the morning, evading the tsotsis.

Her daughter had stayed on at school, planned

to go to Rhodes University, planned

to leave South Africa.

 

We could not assuage Precious’ fear. We thanked her

for looking after us. We became used

to the gratings on all of the windows.

We felt safe behind the garden’s high walls.

From the verandah, we watched the mist

pour down Table Mountain like dry ice –

and listened to a pair of  Sugarbirds sing

in the Jacaranda. So nothing had changed

yet everything had changed.

 

 

IV

 

Someone in black spray paint had, as it were,

crossed out Rudyard Kipling’s words on the plinth

beneath the bust: THE IMMENSE AND BROODING

SPIRIT STILL SHALL QUICKEN AND CONTROL

LIVING HE WAS THE LAND AND DEAD HIS SOUL

SHALL BE HER SOUL. The same hand probably

had sprayed the plinth, at the foot of the steps,

with: ‘reject racist heroes’. It supports,

on a rearing bronze horse, a bronze horseman

looking for the future.

 

 

Note: first published on the site in January 2012 and subsequently published at http://www.sylviaselzer.com/2015/06/14/the-rhodes-memorial-cape-town/.

 

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POETRY

CECIL AND PRECIOUS

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments2 min read680 views
RHODES MEMORIAL
Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town. © Sylvia Selzer 2009

 

‘Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambesi!’ Cecil Rhodes

 

I

 

Apparently, he loved the view from this spot –

the north east slopes of Table Mountain – indeed,

owned much of the foreground. The sycophants

of Cape Town built, with granite quarried

from the mountain itself, this monument –

with Doric columns and arcades (which he

so revered, apparently), bronze lions à la

Trafalgar Square and a pensive, almost

wistful, bust of Cecil, clergyman’s son,

diamond broker, chancer.

 

 

II

 

The wooden bench from which he so enjoyed

the view survives below the monument

and on which he might have preferred a brass plaque

but perhaps not. He bequeathed the mountainside

to the nation and so ensured its slopes

preserved. We brunched at the restaurant

among the pines. At the next table,

a Coloured waiter served an Asian man

and a Black woman Italian Tomato

Soup and Quiche of the Day.

 

The air was pellucid, alpine. Oddly,

a Marsh Harrier circled above us –

yet this was beautiful. The restaurant

suggested his wish had been achieved

though not, of course, quite as he intended!

Below were the airport, disused cooling towers,

the Guguletsu township and, out of sight,

beyond the mountains that bound the horizon,

his unrealised, longed for, imperial road

from the Cape to Cairo.

 

 

III

 

When we returned to our rented villa

in Newlands, Precious, our maid, was leaving

to catch her train for Guguletsu.

This was her first time at the villa

so she was nervous. She would be home before

nightfall but she must walk through the dark

in the morning, evading the tsotsis.

Her daughter had stayed on at school, planned

to go to Rhodes University, planned

to leave South Africa.

 

We could not assuage Precious’ fear. We thanked her

for looking after us. We became used

to the gratings on all of the windows.

We felt safe behind the garden’s high walls.

From the verandah, we watched the mist

pour down Table Mountain like dry ice –

and listened to a pair of Sugarbirds sing

in the Jacaranda. So nothing had changed

yet everything had changed.

 

 

IV

 

Someone in black spray paint had, as it were,

crossed out Rudyard Kipling’s words on the plinth

beneath the bust: THE IMMENSE AND BROODING

SPIRIT STILL SHALL QUICKEN AND CONTROL

LIVING HE WAS THE LAND AND DEAD HIS SOUL

SHALL BE HER SOUL. The same hand probably

had sprayed the plinth, at the foot of the steps,

with: ‘reject racist heroes’. It supports,

on a rearing bronze horse, a bronze horseman

looking for the future.

 

Note: the poem has subsequently been published at http://www.sylviaselzer.com/2015/06/14/the-rhodes-memorial-cape-town/.

 

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