Reading Allan Kolski Horwitz aloud in the streets of Cape Town
Allan’s poem was read aloud at the base of the Mill Street Bridge M3 highway. People driving by, slowed down. There was no hooting, only a sense of wonder as the words mingled with city-hum and alerted everyone to a sense of beauty and pathos. The winter air was sharp.
It is recommended that Poetry be read everywhere and at all times.
The bridge
Allan Kolski Horwitz
When all strength had left him
and all songs departed,
an old man took him and laid him
by a bridge on the National Road –
convoys of sheep-farmers and water-diviners
and a kommandant in a Casspir
passed him there.
And in the heat of that day,
he lay past noon without stirring
it was a roving jackal that drove
him from under the bridge
to the lime-washed walls of a donga,
there for the gathering
of sunflower seeds.
Then from the pondoks outside Christiana,
out of the shade of a dry eucalyptus,
an old woman fed him pap and a trickle of tea;
at last, under that blue sky
he felt strong in the knees.
Allan Kolski Horwitz is a poet and publisher living in Gauteng. He is one of 149 poets included in the amazing soon-to-be-published anthology, Africa! My Africa!
If you’d like to order a copy, please email African Sun Press: afpress@iafrica.com
