Ashes of Experience

                                                                                        

Not only Sinclair Beiles's first poetry collection, but also the first winner of the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, in 1969. Incidentally, Ingrid Jonker would have been 87 yesterday, 19 September.

Happy this exile, by Sinclair Beiles

Happy
This exile.
In unfamiliar streets
Canaries sing
And women smile from their doorways
At the stranger
Who carries his heart
In his hand.
He walks about the marketplace
As if risen from the dead
An ancestor
Come to see his people
Trading old coins
Stamped with his likeness.

Published in Ashes of Experience, Wurm, Pretoria, 1969

Minutes to Go Redux

Minute to Go Redux, by William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles and Gregory Corso, published by Moloko Print, 2020. Edited and introduced by Oliver Harris.

 

From 'The Exodus' by Sinclair Beiles

'And God was an Indian
Who did not kill insects -
And so without our toothbrushes
And our moustache mugs
We were savoured in the wilderness
Though we had these cachous to sweeten
Our breath and the tempers
Of Austrian hotel managers.'
 

From 'The Exodus', published in Ashes of Experience, Wurm, Pretoria, 1969