Easter Sunday, Maltese Cross, Cederberg

(For Rich and Kirsty) Some ancient Celtic god scattered this landscape with great rocks: giant square runes of boulders, massive cthonic pillars. Thixo, are you hiding in these stones? The climb is steep, the morning bright, the wind fresh. Maltese Cross. Knights of Malta. Druids, wizards. These mysterious heights. Hours. In the distance it rises. My first thought is Thor has dropped his hammer – driven the handle deep into the ground, smashed the head to a mallet-stub. We walk on. Along the plateau bushveld scrub is sparse, blackened by fire. The rest is desert. In this holocaust it rises like a mushroom cloud; geological cipher of apocalypse. Someone suggests a baobab. Or oak. Oasis of stone in this wilderness of rock, brittle birds nesting on grey branches with grey leaves. We walk on, into the shadow of a phallus, feeling impotent under its angular tumescence. Further still, and a sudden symmetry suggests a castle turret, soldiers surveying the medieval world from behind sandstone-masoned battlements. The ground is rough, the day hot, the wind fierce. Thorns scratch at our legs. The air is dry. Green furrows promise water. A grey fist now, it rises to punch the air defying dust praising the streams declaring: There is life here. Strength, brother; peace; fight, brother, if you must. This Maltese Cross of stone has hidden meaning on a Sunday of resurrection in an arid southern region needing rain.

 

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