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POETRY
MATRIC SETWORKS 2024

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CONTENTS:

‘Mirror’ by Sylvia Plath

‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley

‘Remember’ by Christina Rosetti

‘The Discardment’ by Alan Paton

‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne

‘The Tenant’ by Na Ngulube

‘Touch’ by Hugh Lewin

‘Will it be so again?’ by Cecil Day-Lewis

‘Sonnet 104’ by William Shakespeare

‘Strangers Forever’ by Amin Kassim

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful‚

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

We gave her a discardment

A trifle, a thing no longer to be worn,

Its purpose served, its life done.

She put it on with exclamations,

Her eyes shone, she called and cried,

The great bulk of her pirouetted

She danced and mimed, sang snatches of a song.

she called out blessings on her native tongue

She called out to her fellow-servants

The the strangers and passers-by

To all the continent of Africa

To see this wonder, to participate

In this intolerable joy.

And so for nothing

Is purchased loyalty and trust

And the unquestioning obedience

Of the earth's most rare simplicity.

So for nothing

The destruction of a world.

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus.

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

There is no room for you

In my heart. The only tenant

Who ever lived there left

Some luggage behind.

I didn't even evict her. She

Simply left without a word.

I keep hoping she will come

Back and collect the luggage

Or at least arrange for disposal

Clean out the place, throw out

Old memories.

I could possibly live with

The marks on the walls. Some

Are completely indelible

Some I even like.

But you see I am afraid that

If it all goes, what will I do

With all that empty space.

When I get out

I’m going to ask someone

to touch me

very gently please

and slowly,

touch me

I want

to learn again

how life feels.

I’ve not been touched

for seven years

for seven years

I’ve been untouched

out of touch

and I’ve learnt

to know now

the meaning of

untouchable.

Untouched – not quite

I can count the tings

that have touched me

At the beginning

fierce mad fists

beating beating

till I remember

screaming

Don’t touch me

please don’t touch me.

Two: paws

The first four years of paws

every day

patting paws, searching

– arms up, shoes off

legs apart –

prodding paws, systematic

heavy, indifferent

probing away

all privacy.

I don’t want fists and paws

I want

to want to be touched

again

and to touch,

I want to feel alive

I want to say

when I get out

Here I am

please touch me.

By Cecil Day-Lewis

Will it be so again

that the brave, the gifted are lost from view,

and empty, scheming men

are left in peace their lunatic age to renew?

Will it be so again?

Must it be always so

that the best are chosen to fall and sleep

like seeds, and we too slow

in claiming the earth they quicken, and the old usurpers reap

what they could not sow?

Will it be so again -

the jungle code and the hypocrite gesture?

A poppy wreath for the slain

and a cut-throat world for the living? That stale imposture

played on us once again

Will it be as before -

peace, with no heart or mind to ensue it,

guttering down to war

like a libertine to his grave? We should not be surprised: we knew it

Shall it be so again?

Call not upon the glorious dead

to be your witness then.

The living alone can nail their promise to the ones who said

it shall not be so again.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Strangers Forever by Amin Kassim

is a passenger

seated in one huge

compartment

going we do not know where

all strangers

thrown together by chance

who travel without arriving;

Who can read the whispers

of your mind

when they are hidden

even from you?

Though you open a window

though you strive to say

what you feel

and in striving reach

a state of understanding

there is still one part

one small part

that remains your own

one part

that neither I nor anyone else

will ever penetrate.

Forever strangers.