Hometown Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

In this fiftieth green summer
of his love he hears
the blurred voices of the wind
like corpses. He has returned
to the childhood town he left
so many dreams ago.
He watches the sunlight
plastered onto patches of cement.
The river leaks past the old school
and coughs into a muddy silence
far from the sea.
Under this tree where he
once found a world of poetry
the pages of his roadmap flutter
between his fingers like falling leaves.

As a boy he always sat here, alone,
at the town’s edge, on the milestone,
watching the road over the hill.
Now, arseweary and nearly fifty winters old,
shifting and muttering to himself,
he knows he loves it all
too much ever to have returned.