CAPE TOWN
Always the mountain.
On the street are crowds
In colours that the
Mountain’s bulk commands.
And always there are crowds:
The vendors at their wares,
The taxi-drivers’ shouts,
And the heart of the streets.
And always there are hot streets
With light beating from shop-fronts;
And shuffled murmurs of feet
As the people circulate.
And always there are the people,
Xhosa, Afrikaner, Malay
Weaving their rainbow tapestry
Simply by being day by day.
And always there are the days and weeks:
The sun rising and the sun setting;
Fierce blue of sky, gentle brown of earth;
High space, and low sea, and the land there.
And always there is the long-viewed land:
Wide rivers and plains, and the long, mute roads;
Loud farms, the flat veldt, then the villages –
The nation in its particular parts.
And always there is this nation’s song:
The voice of seasons; the voice of beasts;
The voice of the people – that great voice,
Multiple parts in harmony.
And always there is harmony:
Of nation, land, of people, time.
So, on cool streets, or in hot crowds,
Der Tafelberg huge shadows rule.
Always there is a sane rule:
Not of present, nor of past.
Not of the future even,
But of the sentient whole.
Always there is the Whole;
Past parts Men understand:
A Truth more than History
Birthed in the Hand of Love.
Always there is Love.
Not ruler nor ruled
Can govern what hands
Have once learned to give
Rob Lowe writes descriptive narrative verse, intended as platforms for the reader’s imagination. Mildly influenced by the Metaphysical tradition, he has been published online and in print, most recently in Dwell Time 2, and in the RSPB anthology “Back from the Brink”. Her has work pending in Nine Muses Poetry & Seventh Quarry, both Welsh (U.K.) journals, and in Westward Quarterly (Illinois) and The Green Light (U.S.A.).