Requiem for Summer

Autumn and the leaves are falling from the old oaks like tears

These foreign trees the heritage of our colonial past

The fire-ravaged mountain will carry the scars for many years

But the dry dust and soot swirling in the wind will not last

Already the soft green follows the season’s first meagre rain

Another week and the fire lilies will stain the ground like

The blood of all those creeping, crawling things that perished

In the turbulent and vengeful beauty of the flames

All the trees of my ancestors cry blood red leaves

Their mourning clearly audible to anyone who believes

That the soft and chilly wind catching their tears

Holds on her breath the tragedy of all the years

Fire has consumed both nature and the living in her path.

In just a few weeks the blackened bones of tree and bush

Will stand as stark reminders over the beauty of the veld,

Decked in her finest as the flowers and grasses rush

To declare life once more in the land of the dead

Yellow, white, azure blue and crimson red

The clouds fall over the mountain’s cliffs and, laughing

Rise up in the sky, tumbling down once again

And, heedless of their broken promises of rain

Vanish in the cool blue sky leaving nature to

Echo the swallows’ keening cry as they prepare

Once more to the lands of my forefathers to fly

The nights draw in, hiding the mountain’s shame

Now the blackened earth retains just a memory of flame.

It’s in these days that the dry rustle of departing leaves

Echoes in the corridors of memory where the departed dwell

And a soft litany of names is chanted by the autumn wind as she

Catches my breath in icy fingers before dissolving in the sun

Charred memories stir like the dead trees in the breeze

The soot and dust of time eddy round their once sturdy trunks

Soon the spiked green hands of grass and eager joy

Of those blooms that flourish after fire’s devastation

Embrace the last tendrils of summer’s shining legacy

And the mountain will emerge anew with the first winter rain

But the dead trees of my forefathers will never rise again

Consigned to the past by government decree

Like old relationships they now just live in memory.