In Cape Town

 “In poetry I wish you would / Avoid the lilting platitude. . . . You should attempt concrete pression, / Half guessing, half expression.”—Seamus Heaney, “Lines to Myself”

Sors de nos tempêtes, ô sage! . . . Honte au penseur qui se mutile / Et s’en va, chanteur inutile, / Par la porte de la cité!—Victor Hugo, “Fonction du poète” (1840)

[Exit from our tempests, sage,

Avoid the mutilated’s rage;

Shame the useless singer’s pity

Fleeing from the gated city!]

Persisting at this Cape of Storms

Far beyond all hope of norms,

Now a model of Earth’s future

In the cosmos that we nurture.

Hushed reverberations

Sing the earthquake of the nations,

While a huge electronic squall

Overlooks the fate of all

We who imagined that we knew—

And tried so hard to love anew!

Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa, April 28, 2026