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This volume was published in Johannesburg in
1989 by Hippogriff Press. It is available in Tasmania through the author.
Historical note: Hippogriff was a small press run by
Prof. Shirley Pendlebury with Barbara Meyerowicz. In
1987 they produced one of the first novels in South Africa to have been
typeset with desktop publishing software: Phoebe and Nio, which
won that country's most prestigious literary award, the CNA Prize. The
publisher's share of the prize money was ploughed
back into publishing, resultiiing in two small volumes of verse, one
being Poems from Mt Moono by Anne Kellas, the other being a collection
by another Johannesburg poet, Graham Walker.
ISBN:0
620140 11 9
Poet Robert Berold reviewed both collections in
New Contrast Winter 1990, pp.87-89.
An Australian view of Mt Moono is given in Going
down swinging n.10/11, 1990, pp.245-247
(review by Kevin Brophy).
* * * * *.
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"Contemplating emigration was like thinking
about going to the moon. 'Mt Moono' began as an imaginary concept before
I came to Australia. Maybe that process has not quite finished
and I am always going to Mt Moono ..."
Introduction to the author:
To Anne Kellas in exile
by Lionel Abrahams.
Twenty Tigers
I knew there would
be tigers
Listless before we left. I browsed in books
in Anna Kavan's dream house behind a hedge
that became a forest
from whence stepped the tiger
and drew her out to sea
Tigers
I wonder, what do they mean?
From the land of tigers, C signed here telegramme.
We were going there, going back there, going there
Drums beat. I am afraid
Too many tigers ago...
Do tigers eat people? Man eating tigers of India, in windswept cabin house
we watched them;
while we sipped our wine and dipped our cigarettes at ashtrays.
Tigers in black and white TV tree-dappled sunlight
spotlight shadowlight hide
Spent tigers, starved tigers stalking jungleman jungleman
Lone tigers, lame tigers stalking the jungle, the jungle.
Riverquiet huntsmen come, and capture the tigers and tie them
up like trussed fowl
Birds of the feather fowl of the sea, seven leagues away.
Tigers, no tigers in Africa or the Bible - this must be the east then
East meets west in a clash of tigers.
My tigers escape. I am afraid.
Or are you the tiger? You are afraid. Our tigers meet
They don't like each other but they agree on borders.
I am sorry for them. I can see them starving for people,
I can hear them pacing their cages.
I want you. The tiger leaps out of my eyes.
The tiger is tamed.
It lies down inside me and I am ordinary
but I talk in two voices.
Sunlight
riverquiet
jungleman jungleman
* * * * *
Waiting for the bus,
in lines of people
like washing,
you sadden as a shadow
approaches you
takes you next to him
like a loaf of bread.
Fall into step with
his silence.
Huge leaves, five-fingered,
pat the earth gently
with brown.
© Anne Kellas
Following Icarus
The morning sun shone.
She polished it daily
and put it out to dry.
By midday she was ready
her petals just
crisp enough to fly.
Her form refined enough
her attunement
exact.
By evening she had learnt
how to cry.
* * * * *
Night comes to me
Night comes to me. It stands there, brandishing long
sticks,
walking on the ears of crickets,
on the pin points of dew.
It shaves the grass as it comes,
swathes the moon,
brushes away everything
with the blood-intimacy of the dark.
Like the hob goblin stars
in the interstices of the sky
I hide my weakness from the dynamo in the night.
Monkeys torment each other in their cages
in silence, mouths open, screaming from withdrawal pains
The night goes by, with its eyes averted.
* * * * *
Compton's Place, Mbabane
I opened the door
to the mist in the night
and found a bundle of dry reeds
moss on one of them
all the same length
neatly on the doorstep.
I threw them into the mist,
angry.
Here’s what I think of your charms and spells,
I said to the night.
I must keep death out
wash the walls
light candles
tell beads
untie the spiderwebs.
Scorpion on the white plate waits for me
and all the children are insane.
"I always tried to keep the kitchen clean,"
I tell my mother-in-law in a dream.
Rain hangs on window panes
and dangles outside the ledge
in the no-wind.
One rose, soaked with mist,
shines pink through the steamed-up window.
Strange bundles of thatch
on the doorstep again
dry like the shongololo
curled up on the floor.
I saw cracks in the walls
where no cracks were.
Tomorrow I'll start
washing the walls
and the curtains
and the floors.
© Anne Kellas
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