ARUM LILIES

ARUM LILIES

I have been walking through

the thick green grasses above

the sweating vlei looking for dead bodies.

Under some compulsion

I went out among the rich fields

where the song birds spill sweetness

among the rank-scented lilies.

Green stems paling when I uncover the bulb skulls,

moist dark earth flesh peeling from bones.

Drawn by the gleam among the roots,

I expect to see them every moment,

their fascinated eyes smiling at me

above the soft dark earth,

while they crumble and flake

in the spring-fevered breezes.

I don't know why I look for the dead

in the lovely Cape Gardens

but there must be a reason

why the lilies smell so rotten.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1962 – 1963

I wrote this while at UCT and living in Baxter Hall during my first year in South Africa. Cape Town was very beautiful and it was not long after the Sharpeville Massacre. As a child I had fallen into a vlei of stinking mud when I went to pick lilies.