An ongoing problem...?

ELECTRICITY                                                                                                     Martin Steele      

 

Like a bold bolt of lightning, electricity surged down on the village of Insomnia, where Gerard grew up. He  always slept in the hushless gloom of candle light. For years and years he scrubbed his clothes on a wood and zinc corrugated board having previously immersed most of his shirts and socks in a tarnished oval zinc bath that was also used once a month when one felt they needed a good bath. The water was extracted from the levis, sweat shirts and jockey underwear, with two buttons on the fly, by a wooden mangle which certainly earned its name. Then the miracle. Electricity cables laid in the ‘twenties, electric lights burning all night so they could not sleep, the town eventually earning its name: then a Maytag washing machine which made its own mind up as to how and what to wash. They call it a programme, said Gerard to Ike his erstwhile neighbour for, as it seemed a hundred years ago. Ike recently wounded in Flanders in the War  eventually came home with one leg. He joked about it, so great was his courage. Only need one shoe, one sock, one suspender, and all around him joined in the laughter. Is Edison a base-ball player? he said. Gerard pressed the button for warm water, then the button for flow, then the type of washing you want. Being a kind boy he went for the Gentle Cycle. The electric washing machine did a magnanimous job but his last love was for the new dryer. Open the hatch, pop in the socks, smoke a pipeful and before the burning tobacco was cold and the cycle completed, bend cagily over the open top, hold the lid back with your forehead to prevent it crashing down and crushing your fingers; he felt for his socks and gently extricated them like a surgeon looking for a suture that has been left in a patient’s abdomen. Gerard gradually started cursing the machine. After many  loads of drying he was always one sock short. He searched inside the washer tunnel --  nothing. Where could it have gone? Frantically turning the handle on the new telephone hand-set he spoke to the manual  exchange  operator as to how he could contact the manufacturers. She didn’t know she told him, and didn’t know that there was even such a danged thing. But the cycle of a lost sock went on and on. Sitting on the porch with Ike, they discussed their new washing and drying machines. Ike hobbled along on the wooden floor on his wooden crutches. Leaning against the scullery wall he said, You know Gerard, I am getting rid of my machines. Going back to hand washing and line drying. And why is that? asks Gerard. Because, after every wash I end up with two socks.

This story is an extract from my book on misunderstanding language, customs and cultures all over the world.
(to be contd)


SO THEY SPEAK ENGLISH IN AMERICA…

OKAY! So they still talk English in America. Right? Wrong.
As I enter the Hilton Hotel and Towers on Avenue of the Americas in New York the doorman on the sidewalk takes my bags and gives me a receipt. Will I see them again? I will. This is not a Third World Country. I give the guy a one dollar bill. Everyone tells me this is the going rate. I feel bad. (Okay, in SA currency it's over ten rand fifty- but he doesn't know that.)
Now I'm standing in the foyer waiting to check in at the special counter for HHonors guests and then make for the elevator. Over by the sidewalk revolving door I see the luggage man wheeling my bags on something that looks like a four-poster bed. This luggage-man is struggling to open the door (not the revolving door) but a heavy looking glass push-type door. But his arms aren't long enough and he can't reach the door to push open and then try to push the four-poster thru' the door.
I amble over to help him but my wife grabs me by my suede lumber-jacket and says "Don't touch him. Don't go near. If you help him and a bag falls on his foot he'll sue you for one million bucks." I think she's got something there and to placate my conscience I say to the struggling guy “Oh! I thought these doors were electronically controlled" and he answers "No, they're made of Armor Plate!" So what did he think I said?
The Hotel was hosting a convention of 2500 women from the Denomination Sisterhood. They came from all parts of the States. Short women, tall women, big women, plump women, all sorts, shapes and sizes.
I got into the crowded elevator. Standing next to me was a small, stout woman about 5 foot one inch in height. I pressed my floor, number 37. The button lit up. She stretched to hit 41. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. She sighed deeply in despair. I said to her that she should remove her white gloves as the buttons worked on body-heat. She looked at me as if I was from another world. "You see Madame” I said, “the heat from the fingers activates the button. It works on heat transfer.” A rasping snigger came from one of the other twenty people in the elevator.
She pressed again having half-removed one glove. She pushed again. Nothing happened. I reached across her head and hit her 41. It was activated by the time we got to 35. Just in time so to speak.
I smiled at her. A wide smile of achievement. I almost smirked in my self-made satisfaction.
She looked up at me and said. "Oh! My finger is so sore."
I said to her (in a joke, you know) “Did you hit your husband over the head?" implying that she had damaged her finger in some untoward action.
"No," she said "We have a lot of autos in California."
So much for my English!
...
In America, I was now on the horns of a dilemma- and it hurt. I'm in an "English'" -speaking country and no one understands me. What if I’m stranded in the Deep South? No Sirree! Not for me.
I had to reach a compromise with myself. Either I am an alien from Mars visiting the States or I am from Earth visiting the United States of Mars.
Every time I spoke to an American I said to myself “He is definitely from Mars." Or, Oh! she is definitely from Mars. I repeated this saying every day for the three weeks I was traveling around.
After The Hilton Hotel episode I found myself on the West Coast at Newport Beach, staying at The Hyatt which was only about three K's from Balbao Beach across the Pacific Coast Highway. Four lanes in each direction from North to South.
You had to cross the highway and I ran across this highway every morning at about six a.m. You could only cross with the aid of the intersection lights which changed to "DONT WALK’ very quickly.
This particular warm July day I jogged down to Balbao, a little kind of fishing town on an island. Solid wooden houses, very tiny and which couldn't be bought for under a million dollars.
One morning whilst jogging slowly down the hill, on the narrow sidewalk away from the highway, a man of about forty years of age, with a well endowed head of moving thick black hair,passed me on the sidewalk going the opposite way towards the PCH. He was wheezing and spluttering and the sweat drops glistened on his face. He wore a pink silk shirt now transparent from his sweat. His spectacles had pink strings attached. He carried his suit jacket over one shoulder and a crocodile brown briefcase in the other. Thinking back it may have been a lap-top. He was wearing skin shoes.
But Boy! was he sweating. I didn't realise one could sweat like that. He hadn't even loosened his floral patterned tie still Windsor-knotted 'round his neck.
I said to my-self. "He's definitely from Mars! Maybe I'm from Mars!"
"He's definitely from Mars. Maybe I'm from Mars." I kept repeating whilst I jogged on down the hill.
At the bottom of the hill I U-turned and slowly jogged up the incline to-wards the PCH. I tell you the man from Mars was going at one hell of a lick. He was walking and I was jogging but he was putting plenty of space between us.
He was waiting for the lights to turn green when I caught up to him. I was melting in my blue track-suit this mid-summer early morn and wearing a Charles Bronson wharf-side docker’s knit cap with Giants embroidered on the front, must have had him puzzled.
At the PCH I stood next to him. He was puffing irregularly. He turned to me, smiled and said "Where y'all from?"
Without hesitating I said "From Mars..."
He stared at me with open mouth. I have a nut next to me he must have been thinking.
Then I looked up at the lights and touched him with an involuntary action and shouted. "Come quickly. Quickly. The robot's changing."
He swung his briefcase in my direction and took off against the red lights on the intersecting road. I heard the screech of brakes and shrill hooting of horns. I didn't look back. I was busy crossing eight lanes of traffic. I thought I heard revving engines. Was something taking off?
I've a feeling he made it to where-ever he was going!


NOTE: In South Africa, England and most Commonwealth countries traffic lights are called robots.




 

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I have been most remiss in not doing much posting. Just doing a lot of writing and reading.

Received this note yesterday:


This message was sent through OurEcho Contact Form
From: Gail Lee Martin
E-mail: glmartin1@cox.net
Sent: Sun Mar 1 12:35:12 CST 2009
Message:

Hi Martin, I would like to feature you in the next spotlight on the home page. If you would write a little about your self as a writer and maybe send a photo of yourself, I will see that Scott Lupo gets it posted. The spotlight helps everybody get more aquainted. Word limit is no problem.
As always, Gail, assistant editor 

A few weeks ago I won a High Distinction award for my poem Omaha, Day One. ... and oh! yes! a check came with it.

Tongue in cheek.

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The Dogs of War

Story ID:	4741
Written by:	Martin Steele (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Story
Writers Conference:	Russell County, Alabama Historical Markers
Location:	Delray Beach USA
Year:	2009

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After having written numerous pieces, the themes being war, I received a few messages asking me if I had ever written anything about The Dogs of War; well that was a challenge and I accepted it. (One word in the piece below may upset a few readers but it is a natural function.) THE DOGS OF WAR                                               Martin Steele So many times I passed by the dog pound on 57th Avenue and the yelping and the crying and the howling upset me no end that on my last walk I decided to do something about this cruel situation. I walked into the common arresting quarters. Dogs pulled at metal chains, some choked by collars that were meant for pigeons and some dogs just lying around watching the guards playing Texas Hold ‘em. Can I have one of these dogs I asked the guy dealing? Take as many as you like, he said but don’t come back next week and say they cannot be house trained. This is not a house here y’know. I selected a burly brindle bull dog. I liked the way he looked at me sideways. He smirked on as if to say, If you take me or leave me it makes no difference. The first few days dragged on. I bought twenty different brands of mince meat, sweet garden peas, smoked artificial ox bones and a butcher’s hook just to remind Eddy who was boss here. … but he would not eat until, by accident I placed bully beef from a tin made and printed in Argentina on the Sunday Tribune Sports page. Eddy perked up waving his tail up and down like helicopter blades fluttering in Afghanistan. Then I noticed the staring and eating, all the while looking at a picture on the page showing Babe Ruth hitting his first homer. From that day on of laying the food on the sports pages I encountered no problems with Eddy. He became more affectionate, touched the controls on the TV and by some uncanny movement turned on ESPN and watched baseball and basket ball all night and day long. He turned out to be the best watch dog I ever had. He never missed a match or playoff. I decided to take him to a college football game. At first he barked furiously at the odd shaped ball. Then he developed a rooting style. This is what he did. After the First Quarter he would run onto the field after breaking away and make straight for one of the two goal posts. Lifting his leg he urinated against one of the set of posts. It was uncanny because whatever post he peed against that side would win. At an important game I intentionally let him “escape” as the fourth quarter was coming to an end. He made straight for the posts to the left of us and conducted his duties. The scores at the time were even. Two minutes to go. Anyone want a bet I shouted. Yeah, came the reply from several guys sitting around me. I’ll give two to one. The money poured in. Now Eddy, I said to myself, I hope you peed against the right post. As he licked my hand the side I backed scored a touch down and then the final whistle. My pockets were bulging and the notes made a fresh crispy noise in my pocket. We passed by Circuit City and I felt the least I could do was to buy him his own television set. Now he never budges out of the house. I have noticed though that he regularly tunes into CNN and watches the War news and closely follows what is going on in Iraq. I wonder which side he is on? Then American soldiers came on the scene to confront a bunch of insurgents. Eddy barked and barked and barked then jumping off the couch promptly urinated against the soldier’s leg on the screen. I patted Eddy, hugged him and gave him an extra plate of food placed on the Sport’s Page and was relieved that we would win this war in Iraq.

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© 2007 Member of the Band, LLC.

My collection of war themed poetry and essays continues. I have much on my mind these days what with health buckling the body a bit and trying to work out why our casements wear out. i.e. the skin that contains our inner workings. I often think of the brain as separate from our bodies. Here the brain can go on forever but our bodies -- well how do we get them to last?

One of the most aggravating trivial items is that when you lend a good book to a "friend" you never get it back. Do Public Libraries have the same problem?





BATTLE SCARS                   
In all wars, armies and soldiers suffer dented armor.
The Crusade armor easily dented by the Moors. Breastplates easily dented before breakfast. Steel helmets shrapnel dented just near the lower brain, dented visors that obscured lowered draw bridges, dented coats of mail that went nowhere. And dented souvenirs in rookie pockets scarred by a mischievous shell. And the odd dented brooch…
After all the weary wars from way past  up to  today, men of all sizes,   in and out of uniform camped in citadels with etchings showing Crimea battles near Sevastopol, Inkerman and Balaklava gnawed into walls with charcoal sticks; and then  flattened flayed fields with decorated dying men smiling amongst portraits and bloody paintings of happy bleeding poppies; flowers and men  always in short supply left clues jammed  on barbed wire picks pointing signs  to  unrecognisable remnants rotting in the grave-yard fields. Long, long ago bodies died with royal dignity carried into the castles of lords and toasted in hot red wine and hot red dancing girls singing to the spirits of departing heroes. Soldiers are always easy to kill in battles, easy to find by plastic dog tags this year, easy to find by a singed sporran and tartans, easy to find by the unposted love letters in half sewn pockets addressed to American sweethearts. That’s what soldiers are there for; to kill or be silently killed. I read on the back page of the comic pages of six men from Ohio who had the clothing on their backs and mirrors in their pockets transferred to their killer louts. A few politicians who couldn’t agree on a Constitution came out in Model T Fords to Fellujah to judge the pace of burial and to make sure six body parts matched six body parts. Here women in shawls crawled out at the dead of night when cooling bodies had long since died with frozen words on their calling lips and the mocking moon casting silent shadows. The women knitted to the men used old flashlights and well used leaking batteries to find a path to loved ones who lay patiently for the air ride home, in an omnibus without windows, without a view along the holocaust  road, only a mirror vapor hiding  a cascading sky. A hundred years earlier when thin red lines held, the women folk crunched  through the mounds of dead  to cuddle and embalm  loved ones with their body oils , to rescue them before human vultures decapitated them and hurled them along dusty streets in the
rims of burning Touchstone tires. Some fretting women  in another century picked with ice tongs amongst bodies in the seventeen hundreds, in the eighteen hundreds in the nineteen hundreds but in the twenties, clever mechanical devices  took over and cradled dead heads in the artificial  smoking battlefields.  In olden days man died honorably by side swords splicing spleen, or could fall off a parapet whilst daydreaming during a siege; could fill his porcelain cup with burning tar but in the end unidentifiable and his name living ever on, on anonymous archive scrolls. Today the warrior does not know when he is dead.
Twice earlier in  Flanders  wet sucking days devoured soldiers limbs and hearts and near Passchendaele women churned the mud to identify  loved ones caked beneath the sorrowful inky earth  searching with a delicacy as if looking for soft cotton balls. The valleys of death held men in dated jaws  for history and names were known amongst  lonely cliff dwellers, names  of men amongst the  poppy powders turning blue; in today’s  new world  dog scavengers find the volunteer boys who ventured forth to fight for fun, a fun that would liberate the world and pour more fun into the infernal funnel  of democracy.  I had a bible once, inscribed by a girl I loved. They told me in my history books that women were the comfort line. The Florence Nightingales preserved your wounded shadow. One day, whilst I was sleeping, my loved one sped away in excitement to Fallujah and all I have now is a dented copper brooch and my name hidden behind the pin. A brooch from my maiden’s beret that glistened like a ruby star in an orange sun.  She was humbly and unabashedly blown apart and grateful days earlier for delayed prayers emailed to her from Ohio to Kentucky to Tallahassee. I didn’t hear about her again and I don’t know where she lies.  I called her mother but the messages unanswered, hung like gangrenous strands from rotting window frames of the valley house. I asked kneeling neighbors the whereabouts of her mama. She’s praying near a scrap yard in Ohio, they said, Waiting for the CEO to suck out the drought dry dents when he returns from his corn puff breakfast.

Here we are almost through January. Time flies but more-so when you get on in years.
The Hippocratic Oath is a law laid down in the medical world named after the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates in the period 4600 to 3700 B.C.
I always wanted to be a doctor but after the war the universities were full with returning servicemen. So what did I do in later years? I visited the Island of Kos in Greece and sat under the tree where Hippocrates lectured to his students. No miracle took place and I left the island without any medical qualifications.
So what has this to do with the Bethesda Hospital? Because in the best medical tradition the treatment and reception my wife received whilst visiting the Emergency was exemplary. We had been there before (who hasn't) but this was an exceptional service.
I wish to thank Dr C Kushnir and RN Gayle. They put us at ease with their warm manner and they are a credit to a great institution as Bethesda.
Relating to patients is not always easy but these were special people. I give our grateful thanks from Janet and myself.

In the past I wrote a few medical! pieces with tongue in cheek. They DID NOT appear in the Lancet.

MEDICINE                        martin steele


It always puzzles me as to how I should take my medicine.
Should I lie across a rough hewn log or castrate myself
on a Mediterranean rock. Should I allow magistrates to administer
their poison sentences or should I grasp my interne by the arm
and twist his wrists until Chinese bangles redden on his forearms.
What about the pins they stick into terminally ill people
telling them that a mild incursion will cure them
or to take twenty pills a day in one gulpen, then telefax the European manufacturers
to tell them that you have had adverse reactions
and cannot sit in a movie house anymore for more than ten minutes.
How about two tea spoonfuls a day of peppermint exotics when you have to telegraph
a condiment factory or utensil factory in Birmingham
and tell them that your local pharmacy does not believe in ESPN.
Or tear the label, embossed by a Greek hypocrite, off the dark blue mottled bottle
and flush it down the toilet with a flurry of curious curtseys.
Make an earnest effort to contact the Pasteur Institute and complain
about the calorie free milk.  And the prescriptions –  can one believe in them
written in hieroglyphics where only a board meeting of specialists
can decipher what you had for breakfast? This is an ongoing problem.
Not eating for ten days then storing your blood in a glass gas container
or a ten gallon drum if you are being overgenerous.
When the bill arrives contact Procter and Gamble and ask them
to recycle your tonsils in aluminium paper and post same
to the director of new discovered drugs. I found out how to take my medicine.
I lay across that broken oaken tree and let the birch take its toll;
drawing purple wheals and dark green spots, was soporific
and  not producing any excess charges or overdoses. The lashing bruises
later developed patterns,  painful and unfortunate.
The nurse brought in the dialysis tube,  took one look at me
and asked, Who did that super job on the pink cheek
of your right buttock? My back faced to the waiting room mirror
and the RX stood out like wet paint. My State Insurance Plan refused to pay.
They said the letters were the wrong way round.

………………………………………………….

MEDICAL JOURNAL                    Martin Steele

Quite a few untwisted pages in the medical journal tell you
that there is a remedy lurking in any pharmacy on the High Street
for almost every nascent ailment. I looked under bones
and there was not much there. As my clavicle is wrapped in aluminium strips 
I looked under ‘weightlessness’, but nothing came up except an old clothes line.
My sternum is encased in chrome and often squeaks
when I lean down to wipe olive oil from the floor
or when I turn too quickly and suddenly find  a non-whistling  frog
in my throat and his mate croaking in  a deep moat nearby.
My elastic tonsils expanded and I found my singing coming through
in raspish whiffs. The hoarse chords echoed 1940 tunes I hummed
long after I had even ceased to whisper. Have your tonsils out,
said my father so I looked in the yellow fever pages under surgeons
and came upon the names of the most exotic fish
and luckily bowls were included in the templates they sent you
on Operational Advice. The journal in small print says,
Tonsils are an intimate part of the body, so don’t play with them;
they have a mind of their own and can sense
Brunswick black leather odours emanating from other dark caves
where lame horses run wild and where sonar sounds
measure the depth of teeth cavities
ensuring no overcharges for magnesium phosphate
which shouldn’t be  there anyway. By Sunday my voice became cracklier
and I had trouble with the underdone steaks on the broiler.
By Sunday the thermometer I had placed on the stove hot plates signalled,
Get Them Out. My intention was to persevere and under the anaesthetic
I prayed that my voice would not come out falsetto.
The surgeon prodded deep down and one or two unfound caves
bellowed near the blue Isle of Capri and macaroni sticks
seemed to be used instead of scalpels. The operation was a culinary success,
whinnied  the four foot three surgeon, who turned out to be an apprentice
for General Motors trying out a burnt orange mini-van
 in the theatre. Climbing  a six- step ladder he windscreen  wiped my brow with 93 Octane and
poured used filter oil into my ears. The metallic parts of my body
suddenly ran smoothly, then abruptly came back to collect me
when I had recuperated.  Back home the Carnegie Hall maestro
was awaiting to test me for Sparafucile. My father’s smile beamed
from  cover to cover. The torn, devastated  Yellow Pages
lay next to the score I was to squall. The forty piece  orchestra
in our slimly seated lounge blew simultaneously in deep accord
and a failed  Weight-Watcher, puffy, swag-bellied  soprano in adipose pants 
held my head and said, Now. I opened my mouth, pursed my lips
to make sure no odd cash was lying about and before I knew it,
tonsils or not I was whistling like a homesick seagull.
The music stopped. The maestro  banged  down his baton
made from the chrome of my sternum and tightened with aluminium strips
and without an aforethought said,
We’ll have to find him a whistling part.

 


This epic poem pops up from time to time.

 
 
  
 
Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2003 : Martin Steele

Finalist - Martin Steele

SAREL AND SAMSON

Preface

Since 1945 Africa has been embroiled with the politics and aspirations of "emerging nations." Portuguese East Africa or Mocambique, was an old ally and neighbour of South Africa. These two countries PEA and South Africa, had the apartheid type indoctrination, but by 1968 the changes came in avalanches. South Africa had compulsory apartheid in 1949; Mocambique gained its "freedom" in 1968. I was there. A destructive war of attrition had been going on in PEA for more than 20 years; the black liberation fighters, known as Frelimo, opposed the government forces Renama.

Frelimo eventually won the day and Mocambique ousted the white Portuguese regime. South Rhodesia and South Africa were to follow. South Africa was worried about these "freedom fighters" or guerrilla fighters. South Africa called them terrorists. In the bush war that was ongoing, black fought and killed black. Frelimo, a rightist freedom movement, was commanded by white Portuguese-trained officers, backed by South Africa. As in the American Civil War, it was possible that brother could fight against brother, on different sides.

In this epic poem, Sarel, a white and Samson, a black, fought against each other. Samson's grandfather entered SA illegally from Mocambique at the turn of the century, and gained employment on the farm where they had lived ever since. Samson was a third generation Mocambiquean; Sarel was a third generation Calvinistic indoctrinated Afrikaner. He was employed on a farm and received low wages. He could be exploited because he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Sarel was the farmer's son, the same age as Samson. They kicked footballs together, laughed together; they loved each other as men love each other in battle. They respected each other's customs. One day the law caught up with Samson and he was deported to Lourenco Marques, where he eventually joined a terrorist group intent on toppling the Mocambique Government. A few years later after Sarel left school he was conscripted into the army. A tragic encounter was to follow. Sarel was on patrol looking for the renegade groups operating on the South African border and Samson was in a group being hunted down. The encounter changed their lives and later the countries involved for ever.

OOM is Afrikaans for uncle, an address of respect to an older person.
The WILGE is a river that flows on the border of the two countries.


Sarel and Samson
An Episode

September again,
And the Low-veld sun
Sinks west, west, west
'Midst molecules of purple mist
That 'rose out the awakening vlei.
Nearby tired troopies clanged new tin pans
'til all was hushed
And darkness like a stalking cat
Crept quietly in.
...
Sarel tossed
Like churning seas.
Sleep had gone forever now.
He knew across the burning gorge
Crept Samson there,
His tattered uniform in Frelimo green;
His smiling face recalling the cry
"Nkosi, come let us ride,"
Bursting 'midst the echoes faint
Of spring induced young jungle buds.
Into the whispering bush he fled
As if red cork ceilings walled his way,
As he wedged warily to the Wilge's bank,
The mud still soft as silk
Where he had crawled
Much earlier on in the earlier day.
And the latent moon
At bone-plate high,

Sat on a pantry shelf alone
Reflecting foot-pads in the mud,
Where not ten hasty hours before
He had wearily tried to sleep with aid
'neath the moon's wax aperture arch.
And the tents of the troopies
Were still and canvas cold
As concrete flats in Hillbrow ruts,
As he peered back to where
They had yesterday camped
And dragged fresh logs 'long a slippery pass.
Frelimo elected to camp just here
Where water was a deadly guard
And man could never wade far and quiet
Nor creep up on a vigilant foe.
Their camp was there for all to see
As was ours for all to see,
For the fighting during the past few weeks
Was sharp and fierce and going on,
And on and on and on and on
Like virgins in a vestal dance.
The Frelimo chief had felt in fact
That both sides in view so clear
Would respect each's wishes to remain alive;
As birds that sing from tree to tree,
Avoid the webs of natural foes,
Coiled as snakes in a brooding nest.
Sarel was tense
He could not rest.
Had he not glimpsed Samson Khumalo's hypnotic face.
That loving face,
And cheerful head that always smiled?
Now remembering
He Samson stood away
When he first learned grief
When he, Sarel came home late from the lands
So weary his heart could dare to split
And found Samson crying at the house brown door,
Like some poor bird that has lost its brood
And returns to find the branches bare.
And now all gone like migratory friends
Leaving lonely loved ones on the porch.

So was it that day
That Sarel came
Into his home and Samson there.
"Sarel! Sarel! jou Pa is dood!"
And took my hand and led me in
To the sodden lounge where my Mother wept;
And Sarel was brave as Samson stood
So proud and tall and comforting,
Telling him now that he would serve him true
As he had served his father before him then,
And his own father to his own father
Long before,
And forever under Samson's eye.
Alas! that was years ago.
Since that time
Ten colours of veld
Had seasonally changed,
Turning them both into upright men,
As the wild fig spits forth its elusive seed,
Scattering them in a garden's grove,
To grow yet again and again.
So had Samson left to go,
The time
When Soweto was pillaged and raped,
And died in the dyed western sun.
And yet today's skirmish was so brave.
The enemy had had the chance to end frail songs,
As last man in the wood,
Whistled soft and low,
Half-praying this was not his last.
Had Sarel not seen that broad black man
Slinking thru' the bush at nine?
(And) half wanting to call out his name,
Light up a pipe and have a chat
And talk about domestics down on the farm
When both were boys
And both unchained to Death.
Sarel returned as a camel to camp,
Thirsty, hot and reluctant to think
That yonder in the bush so hot
His old black friend lay waiting there
The bush noises becoming incessant hums
As the camped roused from sleep to greet the day.

The corporal had found Sarel had wandered away
Without his side-arms or his knife to bear,
And guessed that he was all but done,
Had 'roused the Captain, Oom Hennie Smit
Who thought the worst
As a soldier would...
(Abducted in the night and gone to rest.)
Sarel returned.
"Where the hell have you been this night?
Away from camp, us all at risk.
We could have shot you coming back
And told your Mum that you were lost, Signed, with deep regret.
Don't stray again Old Sarel man,
Stick here and play the lonely game."
Next night
The moon leant out to the north-north east
And struck a barren twig in its neurotic beam.
The leaves quivering thru' the jungle haze
And sand ants playing a last retreat.
I hug you man,
I seek you near,
Tell us again about yester-year.
I know your sigh and I know your cry,
As I cry each night for a glimpse of you...
So Sarel thought.
The clearing was as clean as Vim
And the vlei was slaked by beds of mud.
This was the fight,
Where no sport was sport,
As the possum slinks in the cool ripe air.
It was clear, clear, clear
As a simple sky,
As he slid sideways out of bed
And danced with the dawn
To a libidinal African moon.
The clouds blossoming 'cross the ravine gorge,
And tearing the crevices
With frail stained foam,
Heavy with desires of winds unknown,
Sinks slowly where the Wilge wound,
Settling slowly as spectators stunned

Turn watching their own heroes fall,
Not three metres from the ring-side seat.
So it was that troopies grudgingly filed,
Quick and glum into the narrowing gorge,
Hugging the trees that lined the banks.
An orphan branch, long, long dead
Tugged Sarel's tunic, as if to say
"Go out this day and be alert,
For you this is the shortest day."
...
The gorge was lined by two steep cliffs,
A back-drop to a macabre sad play.
And longingly the river flowed,
Hoping to reach the Indian Sea
Without red blood or human tears.
The river twined and pushed away
As if to escape the penultimate ploy,
Speeding its flow and struggling fast,
To devour the rocks that impeded its path.
On yonder shore the trees bowed low,
Beckoning Sarel to shows of green.
He stared and saw the patterns there,
The same pattern of bush his side
And Samson's patterns too.
The ravine was a bottle-shape,
And a gross monstrosity was unseen.
The shape of the gorge was deformed indeed
Boasting two necks where one should be,
And like a glass mausoleum in between a soldier's tomb.
Samson felt that they knelt there
And stalked and schemed to aid their death.
The troopies went as snails into a spider's web,
Knowing the threads would choke them tight
And no fatal bite would penetrate.
The clouds grew tired, wishing to flee,
But the vulture's child came home to stare

As the patrols faced each other 'cross the gap.
Frelimo guards at the Eastern neck

Made escape that way a hangman's noose.
The troopies plugged the other end,
As now the clouds rose through the day
And showed a board of man and prey.
Oom Hennie Smit looked 'cross the gorge.
Ninety metres spanned the air,
And in the mist, lying unconcerned
The river's pulse
A monster knowing its meandering way.
A sand-bank, brown and white and gold
Looked out to both and churned its sand.
"Let us parley," Oom Hennie shouted loud,
His words as grass hoppers on deadly heat,
Springing away to miss the thrust
Of challenges on a devil's fork,
Landing with clean clear breath
As the vaulter clears the high-hung bar.
"It makes no sense, we're both deployed.
Let us talk and plate this day
With love and longer life."
Silent response met his earnest plea.
And yet again he called out loud.
The rumble-voice echoed through the gorge,
As the Wilge rushed to meet its sea,
Losing balance, and falling three hundred feet
To smash and squirm down far below.
No fish breathed air,
No bird sang loud,
Only the gargling of the hurrying stream.
The heat came up 'tween bush and trees.
Samson thought and gazed quite long
From where the call for peace had come.
He clutched his AyKay with thumb and limb,
'til the pain seared rigid through his brain.
"How do we know you Boers won't shoot?"
Feeling as termites in a trap would feel,
That his trapper would never let him go,
Being food for the final feast at last.
"Send your Captain," came Frelimo's call.
"Send your leader," came the white-man's call.
"Let me go this day," came Sarel's plea.
Birds flew from branches

Scuttling new-born eggs and babes so fresh.
The bush now lives with busy beats
As animals fleeing from a savage fire
That will deep-scald them black,
If they lingered on.
"We send out Leader Samson bold,
We meet you on yon boulders there,
Suckling in the Wilge's wake."
"Go then Sarel son,
I see in your eyes a longing gaze
I do not really understand."
Like the sun does not recognise the dawn
So out went Sarel unarmed
To meet his Samson of old.

THIS IS HOW THE WILGE RIVER TELLS THE TALE:
(Both waded simultaneously, from their respective sides,
Wading in my stream to the meeting point
Samson having got there first
Waited hands on hips
As a mid-wife awaits an impending birth.
He had reached the boulder first.
My brown waters embraced his legs
As he effortlessly clambered up to light.
Sarel trod delicately to the rock's side face
Tearing his nails as he clambered up
To meet his known adversary soon.
Both faced each other as if in trance,
Like a buck wandering into a lioness's feast.
"Samson, dear friend, I greet you this day."
"White-man, you scurrilous cat;
You trick me with my very name.
I do not know you even now."
"It is I Sarel.
I kiss the day."
And the hotness seethed through mangled vines.
The sun so red in the bloodied dawn,
Moving as a cripple over uneven stones.
Now, only silence
As an assegai in an infant's throat.
They waded now through my churning stream,
Each embracing life to their lonely hearts.
Struggling limbs in the death-knell tide.

Wading high, so waist-high too,
Heaving chests pushed to the protruding rocks.
Samson's white athletic vest
Stood out against his silk black shiny skin.
Sarel in the dress of dull khaki youth,
Pushing, pushing towards the rocks
Silently waiting like a shark's sharp fin.
Now sweat was gleaming on Samson's close-shaven head,
And sweat, hot sweat
Seared Sarel's cheeks.
My waters flowed so fast, so fast,
Rearing away and running to leave
This opera scene so damp and cold,
Crying its melancholy chord so late,
A last post in the rocks of the wild,
For forlorn men and sullen birds.
Samson reached the new point first
And hoisted up so easily,
His eyes screwing-up against the growing sun,
And Sarel there in seconds more.
The sun stood still between the cliffs
My waters stopped my flowing heart,
And clocks in mothers' stares stood still.
No helping hand took Sarel up
As slipping and slithering to meet his friend
Lost balance like in a blind man's bluff.
Now later
On the black rock ledge
Both stood steadfast as sentinels in a cage.
"Why have you come, young man?
Do you not know that I am Death's new friend?"
"Samson, it is I Sarel!
Do you not recall?"
Birds scattered from the under-brush,
And sad clouds chased the sun again,
And I the river hurried on.
"Samson, it is I Sarel," he said again.
Samson, glazed in ebony , answered low,
His heart choking on a wayward weed.
"Sarel, oh Sarel, go back please,
The harbinger of death is at your height."
"I asked for you my dear black friend."
"I only see you now Sarel seun

Like yesterday
When we cried in an apartheid church,
My bare toes on the catholic pews
And tears rolling down your crimson cheeks,
Down the wooden aisles
Onto my feet so bare.
"Sarel, do not touch me.
For a million men behind me stand,
Applauding you as sacrificial lamb."
"And what about kennetjie
In the old church lane?
I hit you, you hit me back?"
"That was time long gone, you really knew.
Do not ply me with emotional things.
No diminutive situation is this now
Egged on by an ailing sickly dwarf.
I say again Sarel,
Do not come near.
Keep distance and a heavy smile.
The plan is this, I am to provoke you here
And like quarreling lovers you lash out,
And when the morning meets the night
I would by then have slinked away
Myself orphaned on this putrid rock;
Your body long long gone
And floating east."
Each stood and stared
As fighting cocks in real dark fright,
Deep into each other's limpid heart.
"How does one put back this drainage time?
And I who nursed you in old Jo'burg days."

The talk ran on
And life played on.
Sarel leant forwards to Samson's ear,
To say "Come back with me, my friend so dear.
Let's try again."
So as the predator tracks his prey's next move,
So did the hidden forces way just beyond

Spill fire,
And rapid fire that spat so deep
Made Sarel spin like tops in flight
And with his last fare-well breathed out
"Hold up! Hold up! do not go on."
Samson turned and waved his arms
Like frail branches in a vicious storm
Again raising his arms to the avenging cliffs.
Said "STOP! STOP! I am no hero now."
...
A wild black doll on a string was seen.
Hush.
Samson lifted Sarel off the rock
And cradled him to his virgin vest,
Now crimson with his body's tears;
Hugged him, held him,
Then carefully trod
As on chrystal jars so sugar sweet
Powdered to a pastel salve,
Walked 'cross my waters
So near so far,
As had been aeons before,
And entering the adversaries womb.
No man stirred on either side. No life was heard.
In Samson's arms no life was felt,
Only a feather held in a damsel's sigh,
Samson climbed so still ashore,
Met by Oom Hennie engraved in grief.
Samson lurched on like silk sails in flight
And pointed to a baobab nearby so sad,
Showing gnarled knuckles and an obese trunk
Saw the tree beckoning him to come.
"Bury Sarel there" said Samson now,
"In the shade that never changes lives,
And when you have done this sad, sad thing,
Please spill my blood on his new laid mound,
Then telegraph your God, so bold,
And tell Him now, true, loud and clear
To tell everyone, perhaps next week
At the mid-nite mass or anywhere,

To leave this place,
TO ALL GO HOME.)

THE WILGE WILL TELL THIS TALE AGAIN
WHEN OCEANS DRY AND RIVER
BEDS PLAY WITH MEN'S LOST HOPES.


This poem was a finalist in the 2003 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.


About Martin Steele
Martin Steele writes, "I was born and raised in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. I was educated at King Edward VII School where I first found my love for words. I settled in Delray Beach, Florida in 1999 after waiting 18 years for my Green Card.

"My first real success was in 1951 when my poem "The Fall," appeared in a new English literary magazine, Nimbus. In South Africa I won the Sunday Star's Contest in 1992 for "Language of the Heart." I received a prestigious award from the South African Writers Circle for thirty-six of my poems entitled Night Shade/Day Shade. The volume was the runner-up in the award made to the Professional Writer of the Year, 1999 by the SAWC. I won First Prize in the SAWC Poetry Competition for my poem, "Until Now I Have Struggled." It told the story of the anguish of the heart of a man who was crippled and wounded in some protest action forty years before 1998. The adjudicators were Professor J.P. Wade of the Centre for the Study of South African Language and Literature and Lionel Lawson.

"Nineteen of my poems on the subject of war appeared in Crescent, a journal of new poetry in 1999. In July 1996 my poems appeared in the classical issue Something Quarterly. My poem, "I'm Still Waiting," concerning 9/11, was published in the Great Books Florida News Letter (February 1, 2002) and another poem, "Picture a World Gone By (…11 September 2001)", was included in the September 28, 2001 edition.

"The late Professor Guy Butler, lecturer of English Literature at Grahamstown University, South Africa, who donated his own literary manuscripts to The National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, also sent the museum several of my poems. I have several books of poetry in the NEL Museum.

"Jonathan Ball Publishers of South Africa published my collection of poetry, Life Works. I am currently editing my autobiography chronicling my business and travel adventures in Africa south of the Sahara. It will be called, One Half of My Face."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  



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I am reading Diamonds, Gold and War -- the British, The Boers and the making of South Africa. The town of Kimberley features strongly; after all it was the beginning of de Beers Diamond empire.
My father had a photo taken there in 1926. I set out to find it after dreaming that Idid.

The Old Photo        Martin Steele

The image in my head,
Became clearer as I slept on,
Changing into  black and white patterns.
As background music oozed from my CD,
The form became a face and then a body
Draped in a close fitting woollen overcoat,
Then a smile and an inscription on the back
Of the photo that developed as I  awoke.

The smiling face was my father
Whom I had not seen for fifty five years,
Since he passed away in a white steel bed
In a hospital far out of town. We looked at each other ---
He in the photo
And me lying on the couch,
As Puccini’s lyrics embedded in smooth  notes
Soared as high as heaven.
I stretched out my arms to ensnare the chords
But they disappeared with my dream.

I arose quickly from the couch,
So quick that my body indentations
Still kept their form on the pillows.
I scrambled  through an overladen drawer
Rummaging for my old red wallet
So thin with nothing in,
Except a photo of my father taken in 1926.
His neat writing on the back said simply,
To My Darling, Wasn’t it cold that morning.
In Kimberley.

i was on a search machine and came across my award which I had really forgotten  about.





LOST TEARS

by Martin Steele

In August I arrived on this desolate plate of sand and coarse stones next to the plains of Asia. Going through and through my mind was that I did not believe I could ever cry again. God knows I've cried enough in my sixty years. I found the invisible frontline deadhouse, without furniture or embalming bandages, on thin grey concrete floors vibrating sawdust shards into my throbbing soles. The only movement was a pumped up generator made by Siemens. The sounds of hidden weeping sweated from the green walls, and smeared finger marks and broken nails confettied the small prayer rug under a lonely beam of sunlight sneaking in through a crack in the ceiling. Then the tears came. For courage I hummed silent battle psalms. Lifting a soiled red sheet from a covered mound on the floor I found where he lay with a baggage tag 'round his neck. I recognized the lifeless lashes still pointing proud and erect like a traffic pointsman's poised finger signs. The enemy has taken away his tears. Slowly bending down I carefully replaced his lost tears with mine.


Copyright 2005 by Martin Steele. This poem won the summer 2005 competition from Write On Copy. Mr. Steele's poem "Sarel and Sampson" won Honorable Mention in our 2003 War Poetry Contest.