The Password

Where is the password to unlock a mind

sealed in infancy, deaf, dumb, and blind?

No rod is spared to undo the child;

no note is kept of where its soul is filed.

The only egress opening from within,

its path digresses through a sea of sin.

No pontiff preaches there on what to hope

—in that purview, abandonment is pope.

If password admits, it's biometric,

recognized in your fingerprint or face,

no code to learn, no application's trick,

no need to reconstruct the place—

not so much taught intelligence as luck

that spots a jewel in the ambient muck.

Cape Town, April 2026

Parenthesis

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

—Tennyson, "Ulysses" (1833)

Have I still got anything in me?

Is there anything left to say?

These are the questions that perplex me

As I slouch in bed today.

All the ads out there distract me,

Feeble content lies in wait.

Few, indeed, the friends who read me,

Dulled the once romantic state.

There is, I fear, no simple answer

Silently in awe to heed.

What I have is that I have to—

If the Other has agreed!

Sedgefield, Western Cape, South Africa, April 18, 2026

Palimpsest

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

“Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.”

—Will Rogers

When I was wise I sought obscurity,

And I’ve achieved it now in witless age.

Undone these days, I banish history.

The words I write must wither on the page.

Telling stories, it's said, is telling lies.

A fallow field is “honour’d in the breech,”

And silence, you’ll concur, best sets off speech.

There’s time enough for nothing if love dies.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026, Sedgefield, Western Cape, South Africa