Closing Lines

Broadly speaking this has not been one of the coolest weeks this year.
 
I am also not referring to the electrical short that had us get the electricians out to fix a plug that burnt out. Or the water gush that brought the plumbers out. Or even the actual loss, altogether, of water, for most of last night, causing a flood of boiling level water pouring from the geyser, in an unrelated second flooding incident, brought on when the city water authority simply… cut of the water supply to the neighbourhood… in order to repair yet another burst pipe, this time in the next street. I am not even muttering about the URTI that kept me tied up in remedial bed for two days: Tues and Wednesday. [URTI = Upper Respiratory Tract Infection].
 
But No. The horror event in Manchester on Monday was bad, Firstly, simply because it was bad. More words cannot describe the horror of what happened any better. And also in the sense that we have connections to that city: my Paternal grandmother’s home town, my wife’s maternal grandfather’s home town; and it is the home of many deeply loved friends.
 
We are grateful that all our friends came through physically safely; and in particular that my nephew, Leigh [my brother’s son], who was involved in some organizational way with the event, was not physically hurt. And not just because he’s Sienna Poppie’s soon-to-be- sibling’s expectant dad, but also one of the reasons my brother lives. Strength to all.
 
As someone who is something of a survivor myself, I would say to all those who survived, that the true survival trick is to survive surviving: focus on what happened, not what didn’t happen… in the same way that we do not worry about the bus that passed us while we stood on the pavement, and didn’t hit us. Only consider the “What If’s” if you are a writer or some other creative person in search of plot and countenance.
 
NO. The really bad part of this week for this bloggist, is not what happened in the place the Jamaicans call Girlchester [why should everything be MAN! They say, apparently]. It was what happened at the small, almost intimate, private development facility where I spend odd days, mediating on the learning of many things related to how the world works.
 
A seventh grade child; Head boy of the Prep end of the continuum, brother of a superb 12th Grade fellow: a lad who lived like many boys do: for soccer. He collapsed on the field of play, during an inter-primary football match on Tuesday afternoon: and proved beyond help, despite the valiant efforts of a paramedic team. We don’t know yet why: and i was not there on the morning the announcement ‘that something terribly tragic had happened’ was made… [my absence was initially thought by many to be the referent: that ‘something terrible’ meant me… the old codger who makes the Eights practice Mabu and other tai chi forms before their class starts… and makes people do dailies and weeklies.]. This inevitably compounded the effect when the real source of the tragedy was known.
 
We do know though that we have had a week in which the only mood amongst our 400 odd children was one of deep shock, grief, inchoate frightened anger boiling at times to rage, and, one suspects, many recriminations… in place of the usual happy sounds of innocent interactive play and broadly enthusiastic attendance. Nonetheless there was also through it all, that powerful spirit we also heard about with Manchester… a sense of what the local cultural ‘fundis’ call “Ubuntu”… one for all and all for one. A sense of bonding.
 
The place shall be closed on Monday for the entire facility to attend a funeral that, like the citizens of Manchester, none of us predicted last weekend.
 
Some time last year I wrote some lines that came to me in that mysterious way that is part of the world of poetry, with the ‘message’ [if that is a reasonable way to describe that strange process whereby entire pieces of work suddenly bounce into my consciousness, often without warning] that it belongs at the postscript end of the story with which I am presently engaged: Part Four of the Azanian Quartet. [ 66,000 words down, 32,000 to go?]. And that it was to be called: ‘Closing Lines’
 
At the time, and even now, I have no idea of why they belong there or what it is intended that the subliminal me has in mind for a dénouement I simply trust in the perception that I already have the answer: I simply need to find where I have put it.
 
Anyhow: during a staffroom break time discussion on my return to the facility on Thursday, a random comment, from me to a trio of grief counselors that the management had brought in, to help both the children and us cope with the tragedy, brought a request from a colleague for the information to which I had referred.
 
In the ensuing search for that information, a copy I had printed of the piece called: ‘Closing Lines” effectively forced it self into my attention, broke through my own conscious clouds, and said that it also belonged, in this sorrowful place.
 
Following its injunction, I subsequently presented the ‘closing lines’ to some of the children, and then some of the adults. All agreed, perhaps numbly; and with complete incomprehension at the magnitude of what we faced… an unprecedented event, that they were, somehow, the right words: for reasons no one including me, could fathom… They simply seemed appropriate.
 
I offer them therefore to all of you out there who have felt the horrific pain of this week, both there with regard to Manchester and here; and are deeply, almost guiltily thoughtful, that you are still around while they aren’t. I leave the question of whether they, the words deemed appropriate, are so, to each of you to answer… love you all.
 
Closing Lines.
 
Do not mourn for me
When I am liberated from
This random
Place.
Mourn not for me that I am gone
Mourn rather that
We live in the
End of all those
Times through which we passed
By.
Mourn for the joy we
Expressed, reveling in a forsaken
Place.
 
Mourn rather that you remain.
Unfree from the blessed glory
Of eternal rest.
Must once again walk with those
Who live, awake.
And know that they live
Awake while sleeping.
 
Mourn for what you have
Before you leave,
But mourn not
For me:
Once my journey
Has begun.
!NiK[‘16]
 
In Memory of Katlego Mokholo [2004-2017]
died playing his beloved football.
And those happy persons: murdered in Manchester.
May you all R.I.P.
For we who remain: better prepared… perhaps.
Carpe Diem.