1 Alexander Street, 1955

And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.

Life, how and what is it?

—Browning

The Privy

Just sixteen when I left that house

To take up new employ in Kimberley,

I'd never live there again,

But seventy years on, fragments of it

Remain encoded in my fictile brain.

Odd, of all things, the privy's what

I best recall—that odorous bucket,

Emptied twice a week at dawn

By black men of a designated tribe,

Accorded a monopoly of the task.

Its torn squares of newspaper

Preserving glimpses of the Passing Show,

Sunlight glinting through the planking door,

Jeyes Fluid perfuming the air,

A boy philosopher could cogitate in there,

Permit the reins of speculation to run free.

Such bogs the Stagirite* surely had in his Academy!

The Wall

Then, on one side, a tall brick wall

Separating us from the hotel orchard

With fruit fine as any gods had known;

There, too, a great tank, filled with cold water

From the aquifer that gave the town its name

By a Stewarts & Lloyds windmill, pumping

Tirelessly, did service as a swimming pool.

Though topped with shards of broken glass

Set in cement, the wall was no barrier to us—

A gate gave access; we ate the orchard's fruit,

Which no hotel servant ever seemed to pick,

And splashed in that deep, cool pool,

A troop of noisy boys—all, of course, “white,”

Unwitting future earners of the world’s despite.

The Dining Room

You could not leave your place

Until your plate was clean,

That was a rule my father made

Who served us once a roasted ox heart,

“Big as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape”**—

I’d lately read Browning's line at school,

Its treasure-lump of lapis lazuli handy

Ammunition for my magpie mind.

A boy must do battle with his dad.

I waited him out, hour after hour,

Had more patience, and won.

Taller than he, I told him, presently,

“Go to hell!” He did, alas. Oh, well!

The Bathroom

To get hot water for a bath, you smashed

An orange box and made a fire in the geyser.

It didn’t take long—yet I was reprimanded

By the Principal at school for having dirty feet!

The Kitchen

On the big cast-iron stove, a black woman

In a doek, fries pumpkin fritters and vetkoek,

Baby in a box under the kitchen table.

Angels in Paris would count themselves

Fortunate if they had such things to eat!

The Handy Market

On Saturdays, I served behind the counter

In our shop, the Handy Market

Selling green groceries to customers

Most of whom addressed me as Kleinbaas, “Little Master,”

Among them a woman with no nose,

Only a stinking hole in her face,

To whom I sold, if I remember rightly, a cabbage.

Such were the makings of my adolescent soul.

Leaving

I was not unhappy there, but knew I had to go;

Was what I was, and would become the rest some other place.

One day I boarded a train that bore me off to

Kimberley, Cape Town, London, Athens, California, and here.

Google Earth shows the house since torn down.

Nothing’s there, no more—just a stretch of ochre clay,

Even the privy and the windmill gone today.

*"The Stagirite," Greek Stagiritēs = Aristotle, from Stagira, his native city in ancient Macedonia. "The Passing Show" was a humorous column in the Johannesburg Sunday Times.

Epigraph: Robert Browning, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s Church" (1845). **Quotation ad loc.

Tuesday, August 5, 2025