Page 34 - Dainfern Precinct Living 6 2021

SPECIAL TRIBUTE
and the fish’s:

I come to fish here all the time.
The fish are only five.
I know them, each one, personally
And catch them all alive.

Of course I use fine hooks and bait,
Good line takes the strain:
But since they are inedible,
I let them go again.
To eat to suffer is our lot,
It pierces lips and gums
And rips us from our element
Until our saviour comes.

He mercifully slacks the line,
Unhooks and sets us free;
His infinite compassion is
Our sacred mystery.

And this verse, entitled Carpe diem, is
about a goldfish’s world view . . .
DEATH OF A goldfish in a goldfish bowl

Surveys the world outside
A POET And feels completely in control
Of everything he spies.

My glass a faithful lens
BY JAMES CLARKE He thinks: “I’m in my element,
That shows a foggy firmament
was saddened to read of the death of an old That wobbles and distends.
acquaintance whom I’d greatly admired over many years
– Gus Ferguson. He died aged 80 in the city he loved, “An ever-shifting universe
ICape Town. But thanks to him, we keep on smiling... Of ectoplasmic forms
Beyond all known parameters
Gus had a pharmacy in Plumstead but his claim to fame Of finite fishy norms.
was that he was one of the world’s great writers of comic
verse – every bit as brilliant as Britain’s Ogden Nash. “And yet, this mystic interplay
Does serve me with such love
He was a poet, cartoonist, author, publisher, scientist – That I am blessèd every day
and a long-distance cyclist who, for many years, did the With manna from above.”
annual Cape Town Cycle Tour.
Then there was a strip club for the snails
He was known for his love of snails and wrote many in his garden:
amusing poems about them.
Beneath the Agapanthus shrub
One of my favourites is: There is a Mollusc Stripper Club
That boasts an act to titillate
Many poems I have writ The jaded snail sophisticate.
Extolling snails and I admit
I might have rambled on a bit. To shifting drums and throbbing base
But now my conscience tugs, A vamp comes out at sensual pace
Would I have done the same for slugs? In Lurex mantle, sequined shell
They’re both molluscans, both pathetic, She weaves a concupiscent spell.
But the snail is more aesthetic.
Explicit movements, not Burlesque
He encouraged many aspirant poets and was himself But undulating Arabesque.
published in Britain by Penguin. But poetry is not a way She slides across the flickering strobe
to make lots of money. And, piece by piece, removes her robe.
He wrote: To climax this erotic act
Today I took books She makes her lovely foot contract
To the pulpers but sadly And slips from underneath her shell:
They don’t do poetry. A hyper-naked Jezebel.

Gus was an empathetic man and understood the nature Not every eye was out on stalks
of animals - fish, fowl or four-legged, he loved them all. I Not every snail who gasps and gawks.
cannot imagine him fishing but the following poem looks A cynic gives a knowing shrug:
at the pastime of angling from the angler’s point-of-view “She’s nothing but a common slug!”
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