In Exile - Stephen Watson

Even now, years later when at night the longing comes
nothing matters anymore – nor his memory of the people
the vile, pretentious rich, corrupted poor, those politics
that beggar all description, that all but beggared him-
nothing matters now but his desire, but this mad longing
to know that there is still a place, that it still exists,
that you can come on that same road round Devil’s Peak
and there will be, as there was before, almost an evening,
that softness in the summer dark, the same warmth rising,
breathing from an earth long out of reach of its sunset.

All the rest is irrelevant......


Stephen Watson teaches English at the University of Cape Town
This part of a poem is from his book, In This City published in 1986 one of those few rare books that I have

Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra