The Spiral-Bound Notebooks by Ruth Hartley

Author:Ruth Hartley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ruth Hartley

CAR CRASH

I am killed, I think.

Breath dustily stilled.

Broken stones against my gums.

Tongue glued to my lips with powdered earth.

On my head a crusted sightless bruise stares at the sky with a bloodied eye.

After the shrieking explosion of the crash,

under the gentle evening sky,

it is so quiet and clear

and without meaning – after.

Stars fall in disintegrating arcs

and the soft fruit leaves

the darkening tree and

thuds to the aching ground and rolls down

and rolls down

and rolls down the bank

to stop forever where I lie.

The journey from Jo’burg was so long.

We left them there to die,

old and young,

man and boy,

girl and woman,

in streets of anger,

in police cells,

in riots,

and in their homes.

Lives brief as the glimpsed trajectory of a shooting star,

less swift than unseen bullets,

like ripe fruit falling.

It is the season to leave the tree.

It is the time to join the killer night,

to answer the earth,

to stop forever,

to end.

It is the season for a man to have a gun,

for a woman to raise a fist,

to pluck the fruit,

to feed the earth,

to turn out the light,

to kill.

And so the stunned bodies drop,

and drop,

and drop,

their dead eyes open,

their live wounds open,

and dust, dust, dust,

in their closed hands and nostrils.

I am so far removed from home and family

without memory on the strange field

by the broken car

in the ploughed bank.

Help will come for me

but not for them

not for them

for them.

I am so cold, so cold,

with grieving bruises

and wounds that cry.

At home the people die.

Here it is so quiet and clear

and without meaning – after.

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