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South Atlantic

TO SEE A WORLD

For Pat Rogerson

 

‘To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower…’

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE, William Blake

 

From sixteen hundred miles away a friend,

on the southern most edge of Iberia,

with the Maghreb below the horizon,

and all of the South Atlantic beyond,

sends me a photograph of low dunes,

a cobalt sky, and flaxen sands that stretch

almost out of sight – and texts me to say

she imagines the poem I might write there.

 

***

 

Birds call. A flock of gulls or gannets, too far

out at sea to be sure, flies eastwards, where

almost translucent clouds – teased out like skeins

of wool – are high above the Gulf of Cadiz,

and the elusive ruins of Atlantis.

 

Sand seeps from the dunes onto the beach. Each grain

contributes to the golden shore, and waves

relentlessly tug wet sand seawards.

 

What worlds we carry in our skulls, what albums,

what compasses, and dreams!

 

 

 

GOOD HOPE

Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA
Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA © Sylvia Selzer 2009

At her back, the South Atlantic’s rolling seas,

those ice blue waters, break, skittering

on the silver sands. Burgeoning with child,

she smiles for the camera, as always

optimistically. Mussels encrust the rock

she leans on, kelp bobs like seals on the foam

and Southern Right Whales blow almost out of sight.

Due west, across the unbroken miles,

is Buenos Aires and the teeming hectares

of the Americas. We turn inland. An ostrich

high steps through proteas and heathers,

a tortoise navigates the undergrowth.

Some flowers bloom only after fire. Good choice

to be here on this cape of storms and wrecks.

She carries so many of our pasts –

refugees and indigenes, blacksmiths

and architects, poets and sea captains…

That first image of the future, of something

commonplace, something extraordinary,

will surface without summons, rise instantly,

engulf her forever.