Poetry: Blue Cranes – The Southern Cross

Blue Cranes

A poem by Southern Cross director Sydney Duval, Oliviershoek 1966

Blue cranes fill a broken field

With heartbeats – intimations!

Distilled to pecking the silent yield

Of a ploughman’s austere striations;

They wear charming mandarin smiles

In exquisite consummation

Of their journeying a million miles

From the courts of old Cathay

To this parched highveldvlei.

Beside a barbed wire fence

Knots of nervous tension

Unrehearsed rites commence;

A whispered ascetic commotion

Of cloister silhouettes – bird-stalks

Creeping to silent devotion;

Sober Cistercians to vespers walk

Habits falling to gunmetal tails

Sharpening to crucifixion nails.

Friends we unbuckled bodies there

Young, supple reeds in the old stream

Shocked by the burning of morning air;

Impulse, small talk, tobacco

Are enough for giddy dreams;

A bishop bird breaks cover

Paradise is this plumed incendiary

Fixed forever as in some Pompeii;

A jewel streak in clay.

A stifled invocation – all is gone

But blue cranes on their ancient course

Wings beating back to the source;

And free of debris, this face

Changes to the rapture

Of bird movement in space;

Connected to some blessed web

Sunflowers come in my head.

Sydney Duval is a veteran journalist,
Church worker, and director on
the board of The Southern Cross.