‘Swimming to the Waterfall at Uvongo’ and Other Poetry by Christian Muller

Swimming to the Waterfall at Uvongo

In the heat of the early winter
By the haunts of the southern strand.
Filled with a lust for adventure
We forwent the safety of land.

But the cliffs watched on with suspicion,
In silence they warned us and said:
“Beware of the pools at Uvongo
They’re marked with the work of the dead!”

But we paid the voice no bother
And took no heed of its call.
We swam in the pools at Uvongo
And made for the waterfall.

The push of the current was horrid
The surface was mirky and black.
The sun and the sky beat on us
The water was salty and brack.

But something below was rising
Shouting in malice and fear.
We swam above without a clue
Too young we were to hear.

Something grabbed hold of my ankle
Something wrapped over my feet.
Something was pulling me under
Into the jaws of defeat.

My body was filled with water
I thrashed with the might of the sea.
Yet deeper I sank each moment
And nothing could break me free.

I heard in the bowls of the cavern
As I struggled to hold my breath:
“Beware of the pools at Uvongo
They’re marked with the curse of death!”

On Reading the Romantic Poets

Much have I read in the midnight hours.
Poring ever through those golden pages
chasing whispers from the long dead sages.
How could one resist such pleasant powers?
Those thirsty eyes, drunk on the rolling lines
stagger onward and stumble on the way.
I sit as the aged Jew, blind and grey—

whose crooked finger reads the prophet’s rhymes.
Or like the Magi consulting the stars
to chart a course across the burning sea.
How softly fall those weighty words on me
like autumn leaves, red as the distant Mars.
Such lines still fill my heart, my soul, my head.
For living are the words of the dead!

Poet’s Note: This sonnet takes inspiration from John Keats’ famous “On Reading Chapman’s Homer”

Christian Muller is a high school teacher in South Africa. He is currently working on his MA in English Literature at the University of Pretoria.