Africa! My Africa! is dedicated to Stephen Watson, South African poet and essayist extraordinaire 1954-2011, whose work I first met in his Return of the moon: Versions from the /Xam.
I was at Etosha Pan, in Namibia, when I heard of his death in April this year. The landscape was spectacular at the time – rains had recently broken the desert, bursting it into a range of greens. As the call came through delivering the sad news, mourning clouds gathered, preparing the sky for further storm. A pale chanting goshawk joined our lamentation and praise song. The infinite horizon amplified our homage to this great writer.
I’ve included some of Stephen’s poems in my anthology. Here is one of them:
The abandoned old woman Stephen Watson (Informant: //Kabbo)
Our mother, old, unable to walk,
lay there, incapable,
alone in her old grass and reed hut.
Before we, her sons,
were obliged to leave her behind,
we blocked up her hut’s sides,
closing the openings used as a door,
making use of the struts
from the other huts we were leaving,
but leaving the roof open, exposed to the sky,
so she would still feel
some warmth from the sun.
We had made a small fire.
We had gathered for her
as much dry wood as we could.
It was none of our fault;
we were all of us starving.
No-one could help it,
that we had to leave her behind.
We were all of us starving,
and she, old woman,
she was too weak to go with us,
to seek food at some other place.
One Comment on “Homage to Stephen Watson”
He was my M.A. Creative Writing supervisor at the University of Cape Town (September 2000 to May 2002). By default, he left an indelible imprint in my writing life. As a prose writer, through him I was able to learn and absorb the nature and form of the modern poem in English. I heard about his passing in 2012 through a fellow writer at a coffee shop in King William’s Town. In deep ‘belated’ mourning I dotted down the following lines that were consequently published ten years later in the New Coin:
TO STEPHEN WATSON
Wordsmith of particular note,
you departed without letting
me know. As your last born
I thought I would be the first
one to know, still I would have
slid through the coast,
to your Citadel and brought
you aloe branches. Sleep tight,
send me a greeting to Homer.
Poet Laureate, you departed
before your craft could bloom.
Keep on, scribble your words
on that granite stone.
I will scatter your ashes
on your love nest –
the scary light of the
Cedarbergs.