Exeunt
a small book of mourning poems
Mike Alfred
First published in 2015 by Mike Alfred in association with Ann-Marie Tully. Email: alfredo@telkomsa.net Š in the text and images Mike Alfred Layout, design, and graphics: Ann-Marie Tully Some of these poems have been published by Carapace, and Botsotso’s web pages.
Brixton Tower Cecily wanted to sleep. So there I sat, isolated in the hospital café, drinking tea instead of the dreadful warm-milk coffee, looking through the glass wall at the SABC Building and the Brixton Tower, landmarks of little comfort; bolstering myself there, in Joburg’s mindless roar, beset by her broken arm, struggles to breathe, my fear for this courageous woman’s dwindling will, my shock at this swiftly struck event. But today we’re home and I’m drinking strong Nescafe, watching Cecily gently sleep. My fear dwindles as the bone knits and her breathing strengthens, her legs become more cooperative, she begins to eat and the Brixton Tower can only be seen dimly, from where we live.
Closing Closing the curtains at dusk, I suddenly had this strong feeling that you’d be back soon. How can that be? You died in my mad clutch. Your remains are there on the bookshelf. But I often behave as if you never left, babbling and blubbing away in the silence. I know I mustn’t expect you home again. I must allow your last battle; it was time, you so needed to go. But I survive, voicing and voicing these memories and feelings and asking for cooking tips
Dance He’s sitting among the groomed widows at the monthly party. They’ve finished eating; music and dancing are about to start. He’s not paying attention. He’s thinking of clairvoyants, wondering if they have qualms? He’s querying whether, had he visited a clairvoyant a year ago, he or she would have told him all the bad news: beloved Cecily, inseparable Precious, both gone, house with ambiance, sold, community sundered. He’s wrestling with grief, starting life anew,somewhere else. A widow asks him to dance. He joins the dancers. He dances, and dances, and dances.
Interpretation My friend believes the strangest things: in the spirit world, and reincarnation. After my wife died, and with the best of intentions, trying so intensely to comfort me, he assured me that she was present, every hour of the day, always by my side, that I had suffered no loss. He couldn’t have seen her collapsed, dead and forlorn on the carpet. or lying mute and cold in the undertaker’s, under our kisses. That would have told him something about finality. He should see me talking to the walls. Poor woman, what a fate. Alive, she kept her wise distance. Why would she want to play budgies, once dead? And yet, she is here; not as spirit, just a manifestation of ordinarynesss, an intense memory, always hovering. I call it consciousness, my awareness of loneliness and loss. My friend believes I’m very odd.
Last The last is the longest saddest concert, the longing notes for the dead by the living, and the notes the dead will not relinquish; this slow-rendered performance, these pieces enjoyed on Saturday nights, this tightly clasping swing and jazz, conjuring a blessed absence, retaining a songful presence. The dead draw forth the music of remembrance, these grievings, newly composed, these old favourites eliciting the halfforgotten life, these repetitive playings in dream sleep. with soft notes and harsh, with singing, with private dancing in tears, the music of forever, slowly settling, never more than an echo-distant.
Learning Curve Now then, living with forever and a day: when the rituals are losing warmth and the to-do list is complete and wine has been re-ordered; then therapy by unposted letter can begin and the singing soothes, but disturbs. One may adopt her shopping tutelage and recipe collection. Precious and Ace listen to one’s rants and tears with a certain sympathetic curiosity. One endlessly squares up to solitude, relinquishing life and dabbling terrified, with existence. One figures the answer to the Koan: Widowhood is the sound of one hand clapping. One inches to accept the way death, mercilessly, breath by breath, pillaged Cecily’s life away. Regretting in yet another flood [now that one’s able to think of it], that in those last mortal moments, we didn’t say goodbye.
Legacy Ah, there you are, choosing chutney in the sauces aisle. I look away for an instant and you are gone; Houdini of the supermarket. You were wearing that pale blue turtleneck, weren’t you? Oh, there you are again, will I please go and select some cold meats, and I remember you telling me that general rule of shopping: not to take the first item I see. but check prices, check prices, look for the specials. Was that you, proudly smiling at me before you finally disappeared round the corner?
Now I can tell you … I can tell you that our marriage was one of your great creations, a complete existence. but so silent and modest, I seldom noticed. I can tell you that our marriage, such a splendid journey, provided a way of being, an enchanted life, a completeness now so fractured. Diversion: I wonder where Maslow slotted a good marriage into his hierarchy of human seeking? After all, it’s one of life’s greatest challenges; something to be placed at the apex of achievement. Perhaps he didn’t think it as important as making money or being President. Good Housekeeping doesn’t list the Top Hundred Marriages. I can tell you that you bequeathed me a modicum of steel. You ushered me, callow youth, into an adulthood where I function with care and a certain buoyancy gained from your laughter and your court of wise verdicts.
Termites Friends tell him he looks well, but he knows what’s happening behind the arras: first the books, then the pictures in their frames, followed by the furniture, the floor boards and the Collingwood Street trees. Cecily’s ashes were scattered before they could attack the plain pine coffin. They have left very little, a masticated emptiness. a gap for cold winds. On the night before Precious was put down, after the storm, they emerged, winging from their nests. replenishing the world.
Walking back alone Numbing in this Antarctic blizzard, how many improbable degrees below? Nothing but snowswept emptiness, bare desolation and loss, tropical forests, ten million years beneath, white, eye-searing white against blue, the deep black of heaven, with mind-numbing wind, howling without let, as we kneel among the heroes in Scott’s tent, their eternal stillness preserved in this great, earthly refrigerator. Do they feel loneliness? Do they bother with the frost-bite of loss? Surely they are no longer yearning for familiar company, not, as are the surviving, the guilt-ridden living, explorers of these shuddering, icy wastes, who will now walk back, alone.
The Journey You cannot avoid the journey, it must run its course. You must alight at every station to watch the moon come up and go down. You must be engulfed by a total eclipse. you must sit on a mountain top. You must take one journey round the sun. You must absorb the changing light and shadows; equinoxes, longest and shortest days, black days and purple, must you endure. You must be drenched by storms, sweat in heat, shiver with frost. You must illuminate her birthday and her deathday. On celebratory days, you must weep, you must cry the silent endearments and feel the phantom embraces. The journey cannot be avoided. It may be more, but it cannot be less, it must run its course.
Cecily Alfred died in July 2014 having courageously fought heart disease for many years. These poems by her husband, Mike Alfred, attempt to express his grief.