Post Xmas blues - it's been grey cold and raining all day - all the build-up to Xmas, buying presents (last-minute in my case). Then a friend came round to help wrap the endless presents (6 kids 7 adults). ... and I also spent Xmas Eve making mince pies and a nut-roast and then it was Xmas Day ... I like practical presents - so that's what I got - plus a beautiful pair of pajama bottoms - lovely colours - too nice to wear to bed and my fav chocs - Booja booja - the best.
I came across this poem in January 2020 when I went to Cape Town for a month. I lived there in the 70s and wrote a book about how myself, my husband and baby had lived there under full-on apartheid - called A Hippopotamus at the Table (pub'd by Tambourine Press 2015).
But .... a few weeks after my return .... we were in lockdown and the rest is history, and I forgot all about it .... until the other day, it randomly popped up on my phone. So I finally typed it up and here it is - the topic is rather appropriate for today. And after it, I include one of my favourite poems from Peter - which may be the title of a collection soon to be published by Tambourine Press, posthumously sadly. I know he would have been delighted, dear Peter.
Finally there's a short poem I wrote, still on the rain theme - Raindrops on my Tongue
Rain
by Michael Cope
That day it rained Poetry.
At first, it started with a few words falling;
there
fell love, here sunset,
a
lark or two, a patriotic sentiment …
It
fell faster; the Iliad and the Odyssey came down
in
a sudden squall of dark archaic drops,
the
words of Shakespeare fell, the words of Dante
and
Wordsworth, of Rimbaud and of Donne;
harder
and harder they pelted, soaking into the soil
or
forming puddles, here perhaps a little sonnet
trickling
off the eaves
spatters
of Limericks, a dirge on the slate path.
It
seemed to be slackening
so
I opened the front door, put my hand out to feel,
caught
a verse from the Diamond Sutra
and
a Latin couplet in my hand
wiped
them on my trouser leg and came back in
to
the hot chocolate and the rain-watching.
Li
Po ran mournfully on the window pane.
A
couple of protest poems shook themselves off the carnations
and
joined a sonnet grieving for death.
We
could see it would soon be over and in a few days
we
would be able to pick huge mushrooms
nurtured
by D.H. Lawrence
and
the farmers would be glad of the downpour.
So
we put on our raincoats and our Wellingtons
and
went out to trudge among the puddles and
the
leaves damp with words
and
we were puzzled as to the meaning of this shower…
But
when we came back for supper
we
carefully wiped the poems from our boots.
We
stayed indoors and watched the words come out of the sky
bouncing
off the oak leaves and forming quatrains
that
washed the bird-shit from the car roof.
Small
words on the windows
wrote
nursery rhymes or ballads
that
trickled and ran, reforming themselves
in
the wonders of Spencer and Yeats's finest memories.
In
the gutter leaves, words and mud rolled
towards
the storm-drain.
but
from the window, through the gathering and changing verses
we
could not discern their content.
We
knew however, that somewhere
Mayakovski
and Rilke
were
darkening the soil
and
that cummings would help the seedlings in the yard
that
Elliot would grow fine roses;
but
feared that Shakespeare and Goethe
would
cause the dams to break,
spilling
the dangerous flood,
ripping
at land and trees in all directions.
Through
a break in the cloud
the
sun illuminated a canto by Pound
near
the foot of a young palm tree
and
sparkled over the Mahabharata
as
it seeped through the lawn.
We
sipped hot chocolate and watched a truck go by, splashing Kipling and some
obscure triolets against the hedge,
leaving them to run muddy onto the pavement.
Gus Ferguson
wrote in an email: ‘If a book is done, I
suggest you include the Mike Cope poem ‘Rain’, as it really makes me think of
Pete [Kantey]’
When I first heard Michael read this poem in the small garden adjacent to the South African National Gallery, along with his father, novelist Jack Cope, Menan Du Plessis, and Peter Clarke – it too, made me think of inspiring discussions about Life, the Universe and Poetry, upstairs in Peter’s study, with rain thundering down on the roof and whooshing out of the gutters. I remember too, memorable discussions at al fresco luncheons and wine-soaked dinners – meals surrounded by ebullient, talkative artists, writers, painters and musicians, who never ceased with their constant flow of words, jokes, stories, anecdotes and quotes from remarkable women and men in the giddy world of arts and culture.
Here's Peter Kantey's poem All Blue which he wrote and sent to me, back in London in the 80s...
I die of Rain Forest;
Tiger, I die of
sleep;
I die of flowing,
clear river;
Grizzly; spawning
salmon;
I die of teaming
grassland;
Antelope, Great
Karoo;
I die of clear,
crystal fjords
Timber wolf; whale
meet again;
I die of love; accountability;
Responsibility;
vision.
.... and finally I was walking down the street with a little girl called Neveah (Heaven backwards) one day and she was dancing in front of me with her tongue out - here's the poem I wrote for her -
Raindrops on my
Tongue
I close my eyes and
skip skip skip
down the wet pavement.
Rasberry, strawberry or banana?
Today I’ll pick the caramel toffee fudge
and feel the big wet drops of icy grey
counting one two three. …
Dark sky, grey clouds and I’m wearing
pink shoes, dancing shoes, blue coat,
rainbows kaleidoscope over my head
I put out my tongue and jump skip jump
catching flavours and colours
sherbet lemons fizzing. .
