NIGHT ON THE ZAMBESI

NIGHT ON THE ZAMBESI

The mosquitoes have tattooed

my defending knuckles

with LOVE and HATE

and etched the ululating air

around my head with thin wails of grief.

 

 

I cannot sleep.

The round obsessive moon has ironed

my brain as bland and flat

as her mad, jealous face

and gentle dreaming will not stick to it.

 

 

I am the sweating night's prisoner

and the sun's rejected child.

Sleep and my lover have left me

and there is no hope of this night ending.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1993 Written on a hot night in a tent by the Zambesi River.

Published in 'The West in her Eye. Poems by Women.' 1995

SHREWS AND SAINTS

SHREWS AND SAINTS

There are two sorts of wives,

shrews or saints,

but only one sort of husband,

he who must be obeyed,

not teased or slighted.

Saints of course submit.

Shrews though, must fake it.

I wonder what other role

I could have chosen

since equality is impossible

And isolation difficult.

I am no saint

and I would rather not be a shrew,

but in the end, saint or shrew,

we part our legs and let men in.

It is in receiving that we give birth

and in giving birth we submit

to our children's future

arbitrated by our men.

It seems that we are made to receive.

Alas! The curse of women

for as the New Testament says -

'It is better to give than to receive.'

I would like to be a giver -

though not of blows.

I could be an arbitrator too perhaps?

I cannot find a just marriage however,

to predicate as a possible solution

to the problem of marital disharmony.

Perhaps that is why God

advised men to pull rank?

Pity that it leaves woman as antithesis.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1980? Independence Avenue, Lusaka

SNAIL'S TRAIL

SNAIL'S TRAIL

Reversing the snail's trail

the gardener's dull feet rub out

the shiny, slimy dew

and make a path for work

to enter the early garden.

Next reluctant dogs and later

hasty children criss cross criss the lawn

so many ways and lead us for the day

into knotted webs of domesticity.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1980? Independence Avenue, Lusaka

UNINHABITED FACE

UNINHABITED FACE for FMH February 1990

Uninhabited face.

Uninhabited.

I look at your dead face, the face of the dead.

Curious.

It is not unlived in like a newborn infant

Not untouched like a child

 

 – but abandoned.

Gone away – passed on - departed.

The old euphemisms applied do not explain

do not enlighten the curious absence

of the person – now dead.

The familiar, loved -

and sometimes hated face, known so well,

is not vacant like a room or

like a house empty for renting.

Known too well

so that looking was redundant -unnecessary.

That face is now changed - but with what subtlety.

Uninhabited

and therefore curiously useless

– not even as an empty paper bag

is purposeless - and not you.

Not the one,

not the lost one gone.

Now also uninhabiting.

Part of nothing, nowhere,

unjoined by death.

No flutter in the air.

No sigh left.

Nothing.

Like a torn page from which the writing has faded

there is no meaning to this worn and empty housing

for the soul we could not catch,

could not prevent departing -

it is simply –

uninhabited.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1990 Harare

THE NIGHT'S FOUR CORNERS

THE NIGHT'S FOUR CORNERS

Ever since I was a child

on a straight bed

in a square house

on a rectangular plot

on a street corner

in a small town

in Africa,

nights have had four corners.

Ever since I was a child

the corners of the night are pinned

to the edges of the world

by the sound of crying.

West, the hungry dogs howl and yowl at lost moons.

East, thin cocks crow like village smoke from dying fires.

North, the only lonely train full of farewell ghosts

whistles and leaves home.

Fuff-fleep, fuff-fleeeep,

asleep, you should be asleep.

I lie awake and feel the dark sounds on closed eyes.

South, the last, first car escaping,

turns a corner and unzips the sky

so the naked pale morning flesh of day is seen

and the pitch of tears

which all night vibrated silently

is altered and made cicada shrill as day.

Then the cold prickles on my skin.

Eyelids are barricades against a dark world.

No one else is waking, there is

just the silence of crying.

To the empty world's distant edge no one stirs.

The smell of utter loneliness

pins a child stiff with terror,

on a straight bed at the night's centre.

I was too small to inhabit night's lonely void.

I still am.

The night has four corners

pinned to the edges of the world by crying.

Copyright Ruth Hartley perhaps 1979 after listening to the sounds of the night in Lusaka and recalling a childhood in Harare with the same sounds.

AUTUMN MORNING

AUTUMN MORNING

When the alarm’s blood curdling cry

caesars open the womb of the bed

I am born into the darkness of night.

When uncomfortable day squints

from its perch on the western street light

I open my ears and hear the sound

of car engines shifting in the direction of work.

When the sun reluctant with excuses

sticks it neck out of the east I

close up my dreams.

I must make a late start

to yet another winter.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 2012 Work in progress.

HEN GHOSTS

HEN GHOSTS

I must let the ghosts of my hens out of their coop.

They are quite safe from foxes now

and very pleased to have company

clack clack they say

as they run across the lawn

on clockwork drumsticks

in aprons with pockets

clack clack they say

Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!

If I had eaten them myself

perhaps they wouldn't haunt me?

Copyright Ruth Hartley February 2013 Work in progress.

CROCODILES AND TEARS

CROCODILES AND TEARS

(A NIGHTMARE ABOUT WARMONGERS)

I dreamed last night of crocodiles and tears.

Not the tears of crocodiles,

but tears that fill the pools

where the great beasts lie.

In my sleep the crocodiles slid towards me

on skateboards out of the oily water

silent and smooth

thick as dreams and smiling.

Like blind and tongue-less terrier dogs

with slowly wagging tails they smiled,

but not like dogs, or even wolves,

for suddenly they raised themselves

on tiptoe and ran at me so fast

taking my most precious

in their yellow throats

and leaving me with tears.

Then round and round backwards

thrashing in the water,

unwinding tailwards

like giant screws reversing,

they drowned the most weak and delicate

of my hope's children.

Drowning them with such tremendous

energetic uselessness,

killing all constant calm

but tears, tears, falling on and on

into the shame-filled water

where they have returned

to hate and history.

In quiet and secret places,

in safe homes, in old countries,

fear lies there too submerged.

Here are other men like crocodiles,

cold reptiles, suspended

in a bloodwarm, tearful element

that nurtures them until they maim and kill

and we are left to weep and weep

such endless, unforgiving tears.

Copyright Ruth Hartley

Lusaka 1987? A nightmare after years and years of bush wars and violence.

THE DIFFERENT STROKES OF BIRDS

THE DIFFERENT STROKES OF THE BIRDS

The different strokes of birds in the sky

define the air and shape the space.

Each one is like a marker in a book

or underlining on a page giving

meaning and truth to to time and

point and reason to the world.

Hornbills dip into knives and

glide into paper planes,

while sparrows fall like dry leaves.

Waxbills are pulled by swift

invisible strings into trees.

Doves' wings settling are a hushed prayer

and leaving a spoken blessing.

Wagtails flicker and bow in broken light.

The claplark drums unseen

in a season of promise.

Owls and eagles soothe and smooth

the wind with wings of power.

No human gesture marks history

with favour.

It seems we only scar the souls

of those we love.

Copyright Ruth Hartley

Lusaka 1980s?.