“Night-soil is such a sanitising term, as if done by owls. As if when then day comes, the soil disappears.” My mother was making stew dumplings. Balls of light dough were spooned into boiling water, the pot covered with a lid.

Poets are the last heretics of the world. We flung our country, our trodden, deeply divided land, open like a delightful carpet at our feet. The many colours shot out across the floor and a newborn land slipped from its membrane of languages. And it lay down. Our country lay down among us, translated into parables palpable with light.

We are on our way to Kroonstad for Christmas and as always are surprised how far one can see across South African landscapes. How stretched out, how hopelessly beautiful the country is. And the deep power with which the land remains itself against all onslaughts. We drive in shifts, and the nearer we get to the Free State, the lighter we become.

“I don’t want to shower. I want to smell the whole day of river mud and my youth with your father.”

Listen. Don’t try building a metaphysical German underground for what was nothing more than schoolgirl mice-nests. Would that I rather did my schoolwork properly! Fortunately, the everyday chaff of inappropriate yearnings cleared up like a fog at university.

Don’t know if I am getting better or dying. The children say that I keep saying the same things over and over. That’s true. But my days are so barren that I sometimes think: How in God’s name can this be regarded as a life? Is there not a way to bypass it? I drill all around me, but my life is as small and bare as a penny.