Peter Horn

 

dream world dream

Mirrors like sieves
filled with time
and the hair of the rain
across the doors of the dead
evaporates. A blue mist
resembling smoke.
Far below there is the ancient,
confused, underneath
all we build.

The day is hot and the horizon dances
mirages against the bloodless sky.
Animals which don't exist
float across the wide expanse
living in possibility.

Don't move now, be silent.
Remember his ancient footsteps
remember the travel paths
which lead to the island
to the home in the sky:

Seven herbs are harvested
on seven days and nights:
solsequin, lunariam,
verbena and mercurial,
barbon jonis, capillos veneris,
and the seventh has no name
because the clock and the calendar
can not keep up with us.

Lowing, bellowing, a roar, a yell:
forsahhistû unholdûn?
Creating caves in my ear
words of unknown languages
echo from wall to wall
as I turn into a bird
as I turn into a hyena:
hot like a buck rabbit
blind like a bat
dry like a bone
red like a mangelwurzel
and crazy like a hen.

You must forget what you sing,
there are other words like a wind
crossing the moors and the deserts,
words of power which change your fate:
Sôse bênrenkî, sôse bluotrenkî, sôse lidirenkî
bên zi bêna, bluot zi bluoda,
lid zi gilidin, sôse gelîmida sîn!

There is no return ticket.
If the spirits want to see you
they will let you know,
henbane, hemlock, mandrake,
moonshade, opium and saffron,
leaves and magic,
rhythmic play of syllables
and drums beaten at dawn,
deadly nightshade, water milk,
monk's hood and finger herb,
belladonna, smallage, wolf-bane,
cinquefoil, mingled with fine wheat.

You will feel
darkness burst out of the gall bladder,
envelop the world, you will see nothing,
and your body will feel quite feathery
you will travel naked through the air:
not the stick and not the broom
make you fly like the storks to the mountains
fetching this crazy happiness.

It's the wind. It's the words.
A breeze of nothing. A ghost of a smile.
It is the South wind stirring the dust.
The dogs at night are restless and barking.
Not from this side of the mirror:
it comes from both sides,
sitting on the hedges
in the shadow which falls
across the yard where the earth
is covered in cut bushes
and stones are piled on them.
You leap into the dark, blinded,
you get lost in tangle of thorny shrubs.
You do not talk the language of this year.
You do not understand.

Mirrors filled with paintings
songs and stories: and with sleep.
When are we? When something
breaks open our mouth to make it sing?
When we try to change the world
dreaming the world in another way?
When we make a moon from a tattered shoe?
When we eat poppy seed with the dead.

Apple, pear and banana
enter my mouth as a miracle:
from afar: they taste like life.
This sweetness compressed
into a waking moment, sunlike,
earthy, nameless: the fruit of distant roots.
I point out their smell with my fingers.
The grass which felt like a star carpet
underneath my back: and the amazement
as I dived into the pool
to wash my bird feathers.
How can you follow the path
through the hollow of the bamboo
where it sings of that other grass
underneath the waves
where the colourful fish
exercise their ballet drill?
You cannot escape the singing god:
Swimming against the tidal wave
bodies turn to stone
with a new moon face.

 

The night of black rainbow

It is the night of black rainbow
and the undulating silence,
the night of the colourless butterflies.

It is the night of the dark viola,
the night of the telephone wires humming,
greeting the white serpent of the mist
which rises from the sea.

It is the night when the weathervanes wheel
on the airfield in boredom,
it is the night when the grief of the women
fills the air with endless wailing.

It is the night of the drawn out scream,
when the men walk chained to their trembling,
when the rhythm of their steps
sends shivers down your spine.

 

After the blaze

In the sunset of my silence lies
a field
sown with skulls
covered by the webs
of the spider of forgetting
heads with empty sockets
ponder the horizon
and the book with unread pages

words have been erased
and poems burned to ashes
in the blaze of thousand shacks

I hear fire-engines
battling through the gale
and the half-moon a fermata
of the wailing sirens howl

A burnt voice
weeps the salty water of the sea
in the smoke

 

Prophets of doom and prophets of paradise

Freezing, up to his neck in water,
his soul in frozen slush,
and entirely in the dark, the prophet of the new ice age,
with the darkest clouds in his eyes,
will tell you: the sun has taken leave and will stop to shine
for the next century. Until then we will have make do
with our coal stoves and paraffin lamps.

Well, maybe. If there is any coal and paraffin left.

No trumpets, no solemn inauguration,
and the water-supply is intermittent,
electricity promised, but only if you pay for it,
and the home-grown vegetables have wilted in the drought
and thought has fled to the Kalahari desert.

At the end of the dream you will wake up
and count your countless blessings
like sunshine and braaivleis (if you could afford meat)
but they don't make Chevrolets any more
and you are content with a bike anyway.

And oranges, of course, how could I forget.

Heroes sit in circles and debate the way forward,
I sit in lamb skin slippers and watch TV.
The books are opened in vain:
the recipes have been erased
and it is doubtful they ever existed.
Some say, the solution would be to become a Trappist.
The effect is about the same.

Not that they don't try.
And one meal during break is better than none at all.
It does not quite match the big dream of a golden world,
but it is something. It is possible
that one day the whole affair will fall apart,
but then nothing is certain in this world

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