Crutches Couple, Gardens, Cape Town

I want to write about you, crutches couple. I want to celebrate (mournfully, of course) the way you cross the intersection: diagonally, dismissive of the waiting cars - searching your way through the dark between traffic lights as if blindfolded (perhaps you are blind) six legs, two each and either side, a symmetry of tarnished steel supports in the lady’s right hand in the gentleman’s left hand … Charlie Chaplin had to practise the routine of his cane-and-hobble hobo’s walk; your limps are a performance for an audience of passing traffic. I will not go so far as to call you Orpheus and Eurydice wailing to the night. There is no banjo, no lyre in sight - your free arms carry bundles, burdens, death. Now I have recorded your passing washed my hands of mythology noted your quirks But I am left asking: what good the pen-page synergy? (Sometimes poets can be jerks.)

 

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