An Antelope and a Lily

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Aandpypie (Gladiolus liliaceus), 19 October 2018. Copyright 2018 Forgotten Fields. All rights reserved.
Gladiolus lileaceus (Taken 19 October 2018)

A delightful fact I neglect to mention is that my beloved Gladiolus liliaceus, commonly known as the Large Brown Afrikaner and Aandpypie1 (“little evening pipe”2), has yet another common Afrikaans name: the Ribbokblom3, that is, the “rhebok flower”!

Whence the name, I can only speculate—perhaps because the rhebok itself is as rare, or that both are found on hillsides and are brownish-grey? Nonetheless, what are the odds that two of my favourite things—an antelope and a lily—should be thus connected!

  1. [aahnd-paypee]
  2. After the flower that opens at night.
  3. [Ribbok-blom] with a trilled “R” and a short [awh] version of the “o” in “or”.
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My work on the first direction for “Mist from the Mountains” has thus far produced many variations, ten of which are workable. I could present the best among them as individual verses (under an admittedly grandiose title like “Variations on Fog”) or (and this is the idea I shall now attempt) assembled, with appropriate revisions, in a multi-stanza poem.

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As I work on “Mist from the Mountains”, I think inevitably of two poems that have had a significant influence on my idea of poetry: “Le Brouillard” (“The Fog”) by Maurice Carême (which I adore) and “Fog” by Carl Sandberg (which I at once love and abhor).

Incidentally, from my Twitter archive: