Every year, in September, I motor out to Babylonstoren to see the clivias which grow along the river, blooming in triumphant oranges, yellows and coppers. Walking the path that winds through their lovely tree-shaded abode, one has the sense of being immersed in flame. Here and there, this passion is contrasted by the white of arum lilies.
Along the N1 and the road from Klapmuts, on the way to this wonderful garden, you see great swaths of wild arums lilies. They are there like doves of peace, reminders of something persistently good in the human heart. On my recent visit to the clivias, two poor men stood at the Klapmuts intersection, where I had to stop for trucks going past, before I could turn. Each man held a bunch of long-stemmed arums, which they were trying to sell. As they came to my window, I looked into their eyes.
They were not begging, they were appealing.
Later among the flaming oranges, thinking about those two men, I read a poem by Margaret Clough which she’d written after the devastating fire which swept across Silvermine some years back.
She’d been touched by their red rising from the grey ashes. Like a phoenix. After time with the clivias I went to Babylonstoren’s extraordinary succulent garden and there, again with red flowers, read a poem called ‘Blood Brothers’ by Moira Lovell. This appears in the latest issue of Stanzas [No 32 of July 2024]. The poem holds the red of hearts touching during dire times, along with the white of compassion.
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Silvermine, April 2005
Margaret Clough [1934-2024]
A famous winner of the Nobel Prize preferred
leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves,
but that’s because she’d never seen
a pale pink amaryllis stretch
out of bare earth to unzip, one by one
its shiny, perfect petals, or
on a mountain path, discovered
a fleshy Haemanthus cup and looked inside
to see small paintbrush florets there.
She never knew
how, after every living thing
that once grew on this mountain slope
had burnt to death, there rose
from blackened soil and ashes,
on tender naked stalks,
fields of blood-red fire lilies.