To live happily ever after

They were born into Hitler's Germany in the first years of the Second World War. They spent their early childhood being ushered into bunkers to hide from the Allies' bombs. As they grew older, they experienced the occupation of their streets and neighbourhoods by French and American troops respectively. They were divided from family by the Berlin Wall. They were taught by teachers, some of whom had been dug out of ruins. They experienced the 'Wiederaufbau' - the re-building - of an utterly traumatised society and totally broken country.

When the counter-culture movement blossomed, they met and fell immediately in love. Within months, they married - on 1st August 1964. Nine months to the day later, on 1st May 1965, their first child was born. Two years later, they were given the blessing of twins. He provided for their physical needs, she became a full-time mother and housewife.

They adventured to South Africa and, against all initial intentions, remained provisionally, becoming permanent residents and intrepidly exploring the southern continent with their three small children in a VW station wagon, later replaced by a Combi. Life was flow and they rowed the currents and torrents as well as they knew how.

When their 40th wedding anniversary came along, he asked his eldest daughter, the only one of their children who was then still in the country, "Do you want to celebrate our forty-year war with us?"

The quip was to the point. The depths and heights, the joys and horrors, the tedium and adventures, the truth and the lies, the heat and the ice I'd witnessed during their marriage gave me an education as rounded as anyone could wish for.

Today, 60 years on, vulnerable, but fortunately well-cared-for, neither of them is mentally or physically independent anymore. Still, they recognise everyone present in their wedding photographs.

"You are so cute!" my mother exclaims, gazing at the tall, blond 25-year-old in the album, "I would marry you again."

"Oh, I'd go along with that," retorts my white-haired father, adding, "We loved each other then and we love each other now."

When love outlives all pettiness.

Amen.

Trees and the earth's lovelinesses

Today 10 years ago two South African poets - Norman Morrissey and myself, for those who know us - made a covenant under a tree - a copper beech, whom Norman had named Guinevere, for her splendid auburn foliage.

Today 7 years ago, we formally tied the knot before friends and family.

When Norman fell mortally ill in 2017, I went to Guinevere and asked her for help and comfort. I took down words, which I felt streamed to me from her, and entitled it Song of healing. I made a crude monotype print, painting the words as a mirror image to themselves (a requirement for hand-printing letters), and used a few of Guinevere's leaves in the design.

Today 3 years ago, I gave Norman the framed picture as a fourth anniversary gift.

He died on the 26th day after that.

I published the song in Greater Matter, my book of poems tracking my journey of grief as a widow.

Norman's love for Guinevere, and for trees in general, built a foundation for me sounder than anything I had enjoyed before.

Is it presumptuous to say that Guinevere's witness to our covenant ensured that my heart be rooted into a love that was greater than our mere selves? A love that helped make me far more whole than I had been before, a love that healed woes and wounds and curses?

I don't know.

But I do know that I continue to live in and by the laws of love. And that love has deep roots beyond my human flesh, it has roots feeling into all the earth's lovelinesses.

Blunder, a lovely paradox, and 'A Wife's Entreaty'

My apologies to all who may have been inconvenienced by last night's post - 'Caution: Poet at Play' - which I had to delete after discovering that I had no authority to use the accompanying picture.

The picture is the front cover of a book created privately 33-odd years back, and the reason I wished to share it was really to show how longstanding my writerly 'career' has been going on, on the quiet, really ... I would not know how to write if it weren't happening on the quiet.

For me, poetry and love have always gone together - both by definition occupy a quiet, private, special space.

The love books, which Norman and I produced, questioned that definition, you could say, in that the private poems shared in public began to function as reminders to others of their own quiet, loving spaces, as well as the fierce relationship-work, that is necessary, to achieve harmony. You could say that our sharing of our private, intimate experiences worked to spread the possibility of private, intimate experiences between others. A lovely paradox if ever there was.

So today I'll share an old love poem, written to my ex-husband, when I was still trying to salvage our marriage. I addressed him as the poet I/ we believed he was, asking, as so many women do, for open communication. It was not to be. Today I can say I am glad that I/we tried and also glad that I/ we failed. He is far happier not to be a poet.

The poem was published in Love Gyres, my first love poem reading with Norman, in February 2011, in Noordhoek, Cape Town.  

A Wife's Entreaty

I have to find you                                                         

again.                                                                          

Where we are together

is such a quiet place.                                                    

                                                                                   

I mistrust you                                                               

in the world,                                                                

which I mistrust.                                                           

I fear your defeat,

and my loneliness.                                                        

                                                                                   

Good cheer is a chore.                                                 

I miss my joy                                                               

in hiding, a quiet place.                                     

Secluded with you,                                                      

undiscovered,                                                              

both of us.                                                                   

                                                                                   

I am not sure

that facing life                                                               

means being visible.                                                     

If so, I need you

to lift my face for me,                                                   

to put the garlands

in my hair,

so that people can say,

‘She’s there.’

We do nothing

for ourselves.

We scoop the water of our knowledge

from our hearts

and baptise thus

each day.

Let us not be silent

with one another.

Let us protest, entwine,

and say:

‘The quiet place

is full of murmuring. Let us echo

its delicate decrees.’

Look: my lip, my ear.

Clay worked to completion.

Please seek to place

your lip against my ear,

to speak. Your ear

against my mouth,

to hear.

In the din

of this frightening world

it is those intimacies I desire.

You may still steel me

with a verbal smithy’s fire.

You know I have words, signs,

writing in my blood:

captains of so many

red and white boats.

Therefore I do require constant flood

of murmured love.

- From Love Gyres, Simonstown, 2011 

Norman's birthday. A king-sized quilt of a blogpost with a hitherto unpublished poem by him.

Today would have been Norman's 69th birthday. I have put together this blog post for the sake of all who appreciated him and who wish to continue to honour his memory - hopefully smiles will break through any tears on your faces.
I loved to spoil him, I loved to be his wife, it was one of the most fulfilling tasks life ever asked of me.
I am sad not to be able to be his wife anymore, but I am grateful for the few years we were given.
He treated me well; he always put my and others' well-being before his own - to a fault; he shouldered the loads life and, indeed, others unfairly put on him; he never blamed me or others for his faults; his dearest wish was to be a decent human being. He showed me, by living them, the qualities it takes to make a true man. I am so very lucky that he shared himself with me to the extent that he did.

All photos are taken by me, with the exception of the photo of Norman at the Ecca reading, which was taken by Lara Kirsten.

3.10.2012 Norman on his 63rd birthday. Picnic in the Arboretum, Hogsback.

3.10.2012 At The Bluff, The Edge, Hogsback, with his friend John van Wyngaard 

3.10.213 Norman at 64, a wild joyride with me on the back of 'The Red Devil' on the contour path of Hog 1.
As far as I know, this was his favourite photo of himself.

3.10.2014
A deeply unspoiled man suspicious of too much comfort, Norman enjoyed the cultural wealth I brought into his life. 

3.10.2014 Norman reads from 'This Questioning Terrain', the then newest Ecca Poets book. The Rose Theatre, Hogsback.

3.10.2015 Norman on his 66th birthday

3.10.2015 He loves his shirt. Birthday dinner at The Edge Restaurant, Hogsback.

The following poem demonstrates the kind of man Norman was - please read it not so much for what he is saying about me, but for what it shows you about him - how he enjoys my wifely fuss and giving, because he sees it gives me joy!

To be herself

You painted a splendid Sunbird
on a shirt
for me

- made me cakes,
laid out a sumptuous picnic under a tree;
now

you're standing me dinner
with fine champagne and crisp beer:
my birthday

- that you celebrate
with all the radiance of giving
your joyous heart

needs
to be
herself.

- Norman Morrissey, 3/10/2015

3.10.2016
Norman on his 67th with the shirt that marked the launch of the Ecca book that year, 'Gold in Spring'.

Out Of Our Passing Selves

How you made my coffee each morning,
with my pressuring you to let
the very last droplet drain

through
the dregs
in the filter -

I'd watch you,
that you didn't jippo
and that you didn't let it drip

as you scythed the filter
from the cup across the stained mat
to toss the paper into the bin ...

Yet you were one of the deftest
I knew
in your practical gestures -

where was my trust in you
for these petty things?
We'd sit outside over breakfast

you praised each day anew,
how it settled your stomach,
made you feel good.

And we'd talk, track thoughts
in bright, clear dialogue,
our spirits twined

till I got restless, cross even
- 'I'm not like you retired,
I must work!'

And you'd feel guilty like you were hindering me,
while I attended to things
somehow so much less important, yet I'd feel

they were urgent,
more deserving
than the time we had

for one another.
And that made you timid
to approach me for love -

you denied your desire
while I grew tetchy with tension,
overwork, and you'd berate yourself, say,

'It's my fault,'
while I tried to keep the house clean at the same time,
breathless, seeing no outlet for rest ever,

on and on driven
by tasks. How now is it possible
to miss you, to wish you back

into such unpleasant circumstances,
eroded by money worries, physical weakness,
utter absence

of
peace?
I wish it not. You earned your relief. Our human helplessness, our nonsenses, criticisms so marked

are redeemed only ever by
the sun, the coloratura of birds,
the nodding grasses

given to the faintest breeze of feeling
slipping in undeterred -
cool facts

of
life
taking the simplest gatherings

together of us
out and beyond
our passing selves.

Helping Hand

This is another preliminary note that forms part of the story that has formed quite a few sort-of-poems telling the years. It says so much about the man that Norman was, the spirit he still is.

Helping Hand

When in late autumn I resumed my travels

back to you

– pursuing my new life,

our beckoning future –

the first night was troubled

by anxieties –

I lay in wakeful doom;

mind rewove the day's events

and past months' tests –

a manic loom that utterly refused me rest.

But you

in sleep

turned on your back

and took my hand

to squeeze it

several times

unconscious, deep in dreamland's instinct caring.

You warmed away my woman's quakes

and deftly eased my frowning fears –

Since then my trust

is sworn into,

palm-protected by

our pairing –

the fabric of our fingers

joining our best years.

6^th April 2011