Allow me to return momentarily to the “completed” poem, “Sunbird!”. In its opening line, I am still vacillating between two variations, the only difference being an adjective: “A marvellous/dazzling little malachite…” Both have advantages and disadvantages: the former is alliterative but not evocative; the latter, vice versa. (Then, depending on my choice, there are its implications on the rest of the poem to consider.) I have, for the time being, postponed making a final decision, as I want to continue work on “To a Swallow”, but what a wonderful torment it all is!
It has been two weeks since I worked on the “To a Swallow” verses, commandeered by an earlier completed poem, “Sunbird!”. I had doubts about certain aspects of the latter, which I believe I have resolved. I return now to “To a Swallow”, for the most part, unhindered by those concerns.
In many ways, I think of the landscape and creatures of the Overberg (the region in which I live in the Western Cape of South Africa) as divine; and as such, in my poetry, I respond to them, for they fill me with a sense of awe.
