diary of a red chicken day: day 3 by Peter Midgley

diary of a red chicken: day 3

words melt in his throat, emerge dark as honey

the night’s clamminess ushering in the rattletrap dance of skeletons

against the horizon. they are legion, like the sands of the sea

and the skulls in the sand the sailors the explorers the wanderers

and the prisoners on this island,

but they are silent:

…

i have died in multiple ways

each death a parting and a return

i know no longer know from whence i came.

What is departure? What is return?

…

taste the earth—

no, taste the earth,

go down on your hands and knees

dig down below the browned hide

to where the desert sand throbs a darkened red

fill your fingernails with this soil, let it sink again black as honey,

this ink of my body, into the blotting paper of the desert

taste the earth,

smell it,

feel it, feel its textures and its joys weeping to the surface

like water at an oasis: the sorrow

the heartache, the bones of the ancestors drying in the poisoned wells

taste this earth and feel its pain

taste the earth

blotted with the ink of many bodies

…

sometimes words do not speak to him

sometimes the drought of this desert pervades his thoughts

sometimes months pass this way and he withers

oh! the anguish!

oh! the heartstopping breath!

Where are they, these windswept words?

Where are they, these bittered and dried !naras

These fleshy, honeyed sounds that rail against the poet’s frail body?

They come with the spring rain, settle like tumbrils against desert fences

A gemsbok searches for dew among the vygies: monks spread red as words in the sand

on and on and on and on these lines left breathless settle into words, wounds

extract from: diary of a red chicken

Peter Midgley writes in both English & Afrikaans. His poems have appeared in the South African magazines, Literator & New Coin. Peter's first collection of poetry, perhaps I should/miskien moet ek, appeared in 2010.