Rethabile Masilo

Janice's Poem
                   

When you get there, the horses of dawn

before you, the furious wheels of drawn carts,

each distance hard-won with sweated salt,

the road flat between miles; tense; only hoof

and sound of wheel loud above the air,

proof that this is not just a bad dream,

who can say what’s best to do for our calm?

You sit like sculpted ivory among jaded colours,

something in the face you wear, hung like a mask

on walls of inner rooms, something in the sound

whose echo names you, the morning of which

rose out from the gold of you, flaring nostrils

at the world. How can we say who is to blame?

Halfway into destiny, the sun lost all hope,

and shone into itself across the great Smokies.

A slow descent home. The accurate death

of the first words ever spoken: let there be light.

What do we know about the meanings

of things that work against that kind of light?

Rethabile Masilo was born in Lesotho and currently resides in Paris, France. His first contributions to Canopic Jar appeared in 1986 while he was attending Maryville College in the mountains of East Tennessee. He has been the co-editor and prime mover of the Jar since 2004 when he was enlisted to help bring the magazine into the 21st century. His book of poems, Things that Are Silent, will be published by the Pindrop Press in 2012.