DEVIL'S PEAK

DEVIL'S PEAK

Devil's Peak is named after the legend that an old Dutchman challenged the Devil to a contest to see who could smoke his pipe for the longest time. They are both still engaged in this contest and that explains the constant clouds around the peak.

ONE

Quiet on my island-mountain

Alone on Devil's Peak I dream.

Hushed by the sound of pine needles

brushing the wind's back,

soothed of the day's ache

My spine resting on the mountain's bones,

I listen and look while Old Nick himself,

blows smoke in my eyes.

At my feet the subdued city

spreads to the fading hills

a city-sea of sound and people moving

on sand deserted by an ancient ocean.

Once the sea guarded all that land.

Drowned, lost, the regular surges

of the tides, the even breathing

of the water, gave it peace.

In a silence, older and deeper than time

I saw the sighing years recede

and the sea suck out

across the reluctant plain

to beach in the pale and early world

the feeble larva of humanity.

Feeble, spawning, whimpering humanity.

Shell-lacking creatures, translucent, soft,

swelling, spreading, bursting, shouting.

Building encrustations upon the earth.

Homes for humans, schools and jails,

places of achievement, knowledge, power.

Places of words, of sounds, of noise,

but blood seeps from the books and institutions,

for in the fat and comfortable homes

a terrible wrong is reared and nourished.

TWO

Weary I climb up Devil's Peak

in the prosaic noonday sun.

Between the cold Atlantic and the warm Indian sea

the Cape suburbs stretch north to the Drakensberg.

There sit the well-fed houses, smug and squat,

eye-windows glinting under tree-umbrellas,

green garden skirts around their laps

graciously honoured with bouquets of flowers.

But shanties line the back streets

and hovels crowd the gutters.

Beyond the Crossroads in the wasteland

the townships of the Sun and Moon lie

abandoned by the sea and berated by the wind.

Wrinkled tin huts crouch in self-defence,

raising smoke and stench against the blows

of dust, dirt, paper, rags and grime

wielded by the heavy-fisted air.

Sweat and tears ooze from cardboard windows

and trickle down the crippled walls.

Here in the ghetto are the humans not human,

the desires not answered,

the stomachs not filled,

the hearts split with grief.

Here men with skins of khaki drill

and empty minds of cartridge-shell

fence the sky with mad machines

and feed the fires with flesh.

THREE

Alone on Devil's Peak I crouch

clenched against the bitter South-East wind,

escaping from the guilty city

to the place where skollies and lovers

hide from the police.

Beneath my mountain hide-out

the earth is paved with concrete clouds

like rigid ripples in the sand.

The sea has sent its alter-ego

to hide the city from the sky,

to blot out all the present turmoil

and give the Devil back his due.

When will I see the tide hesitate?

When will it end its sinking flight to the earth's edge,

Gather itself, and turning, return?

Let roaring waters drown the plain!

As dry sand greets the sea with singing

The dusty slums will slake their thirst.

The sea will eat the well-fed houses

And destruction screaming, end all wrongs.

But high above the tumult

do I hear somebody crying?

Softly

like the ebbing sea

that delivered up mankind.

Softly

like the one who wept

above Jerusalem

on another mountainside.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1965?

Written after numerous walks alone up Devil's Peak while at UCT and when living in District Six. This poem has been written and rewritten many times and still does not satisfy me.