You have seen the way light can become your face
at the beginning of day when morning opens its door,
and you step onto a stoep buffed with the soft, dry cloth
of life, the smell of Sunbeam in your nose, your cock
gone to finish its night, a matatu loud beyond the bend
even though you have not sat down for breakfast yet
and cannot hail it, have not bathed, nor Vaselined nor
combed the kids to prepare them for school. Thoughts
hold you, keep you up like a child till you smile, even
as sounds out of the mouth of the street float into
your ears, to explain why there is a gap between
awakening and getting up: "it is life coming", the way
a train approaches a middle-of-nowhere stop. Else
there is still time for breakfast, there's always time
for living and, inside you, the clock in your chest
hasn't stopped ticking, fist-sized and red as a peeled
beet, just like the one in the rib-cage of a goat roped
to a tree, when someone with a knife and a tin bucket
approaches it, and it starts bleating. And yet we know
nothing can't not cease—not misfortune, and not life;
and not the speed at which the heart of a robin beats.

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A view of Qoaling (John Hogg photo)