Two Poems from South Africa

Split Fossil

for Willem Boshoff

When an ancient-rock splits open —
     trees and skies starkly mirror

the tectonic drama on the stone’s gaping
     weathered face. Fossils’ imprinted

striations, like those on a human palm,
     preserve histories — cellular intricacies

only palaeontologists can decode.
     as I run my hand on its cracked

surface — my fingers trace a filigree
     of coloured lace-lines, cross-etchings —

clues to cosmic-geological calendars,
     largely indeterminate. Mineral patina

exfoliates, reflects, refracts — splitting light —
     angular shafts of coloured cones

radiating centrifugally. My focus stays
     centred, centripetal. An invisible fulcrum

balances this mise-en-scène — unravelling
     a slide-show, in millisecond flashes.

My Intimate Skies

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
— James Joyce, Ulysses

Pin-hole sharp rays, exact as chiselled diamond tips,
     glow in infinite lumens. In this sprawling crisp-dry

Savannah highveld — these luminous eyes, light up
     my vast intimate skies, writing out terrestrial

histories on an ever-shifting skyscape. Within
     its private metaphors, this fossil-cradled terrain-dna

refracts. The cosmic clockwork measures exactly,
     each light-ray’s frequency, wave-length and laser-

strength. It is astronomy’s language, a slow charting
     of celestial memory on granite-black backdrop —

a plotted canvas, a maritime mapping of ocean’s
     unpredictable trade lanes. Memory is starlight.