ABSENCE

An absence haunts the land
Like a forgotten dream
An unwritten story
In a salt slip-stream

Footprints on the wind
A shard of burnt clay in the hand
A painting on a rock
An absence in the land

Memories of a people
Written on the wind
Footprints in the landscape
Haunt the mind

Footprints on the wind
A shard of burnt clay in the hand
A painting on a rock
An absence in the land

An unwritten story
An absence in the land

An absence in the land

I used to spend weeks and weekends with June Te Water in her shack on the edge of Langebaan Lagoon. She was an inveterate beachcomber and the shack was full of shards of pottery from the dunes on Sixteen Mile beach. These shards of blackened pottery, rubbing stones and bones, pieces of rope and glass floats from the Japanese fishing vessels, adorned the walls of the shack.
I remember staying there alone for one weekend. June had told me that ‘when the wind blows from the east you can hear the voices of the Strandlopers’. And sure enough, I was woken one night by an eerie discordant singing. I stepped outside and it stopped. The wind was blowing from the east. Back inside, it started again. After several repetitions of this ‘in-and-out-dance’ I noticed that there were strands of taut thick nylon line strung in rows over the roof to keep birds off and the rain water clean for the tank. This had created a kind of resonance chamber and the ‘wind from the east’ was vibrating the taut strings. That was the cause of the ‘singing’. I prefer her story.
It is the absence of those vital people that I feel so strongly when I hold one of their tools or a piece of pottery in my hand.

Yho baphela abantu
The people are disappearing

  • Barbara Fairhead