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.
