Ingrid de Kok

In Cape Town 2007, we met the poet Ingrid de Kok, who graciously read to us from her newest book after a long week of going to Robben Island, the townships, and District 6. We ended the first week listening to her with the Indian Ocean on our right. I remember it was approaching sunset.

At our open studios festa (thanking all the artists, poets, scientists, curators, etc), one of my notes to myself was that I wanted to create a Morse code piece of one of her poems. Last night I was re-reading her book, and found a few pieces I connected with:

Body parts

may the wrist turn in the wind like a wing
the severed foot tread home ground

the punctured ear hear the thrum of sunbirds
the molten eye see stars in the dark

the faltering lungs quicken windmills
the maimed hand scatter seeds and grain

the heart flood underground springs
pound maize, recognize named cattle

and may the unfixable broken bone
loosened from its hinges

now lying like a wishbone in the veld
pitted by pointillist ants

give us new bearings.

The transcriber speaks

I was the commission's own captive,
Its anonymous after-hours scribe,
Professional blank slate.
Word by word by word
From winding tape to hieroglyphic key,
From sign to sign, I listened and wrote.
Like bricks for a kiln or tiles for a roof
Or the sweeping of leaves into piles for burning:
I don't know which:
Word upon word upon word.
At first unpunctuated
Apart from quotations and full stops.
But how to transcribe silence from tape?
Is weeping a pause or a word?
What written sign for a strangled throat?
And a witness pointing? That I described,
When officials identified direction and name.
But what if she stared?
And if the silence seemed to stretch
Past the police guard, into the street
Away to a door or a grave or a child,
Was it my job to conclude:
"The witness was silent. There was nothing left to say"?

The head of the household

is a girl of thirteen
and her children are many.

Left-overs, moulting gulls,
wet unweaned sacks

she carries them under her arms
and on her back

though some must walk beside her
bearing their own bones and mash

when not on the floor
in sickness and distress

rolled up in rows
facing the open stall.

Moon and bone-cold stars
navigational spoor

for ambulance, hearse,
the delivery vans

that will fetch and dispatch
the homeless, motherless

unclean and dead
and a girl of thirteen,

children in her arms,
house balanced on her head