Basker Vashee

Tribute to Basker Vashee

[i]While his thoughts travelled to Zimbabwe, his heart finally let him down when riding his bike towards his favourite terrace in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam[/i]

BIRD OF CONSCIENCE

John Berger

Basker was like a bird.
A wading bird.
A bit like a bittern.
The proper name would only be found in the languages of that country he carried with him wherever he went.
For us in Amsterdam he was the Bird of Conscience.
We awaited his approval.
We couldn't seek it, because then he wouldn't give it.
We waited.
He saw everything from afar and close-up.
He never behaved like a judge.
He avoided these.
He watched.
He flew by night.
He was never a dupe.
And he either approved or he didn't.
Many people fell in love with him.
But his natural habitat was reed-beds ands solitude.
His song was an audible intake of breath followed by some long drawn-out name that could be heard miles away.
When he approved, what he offered was sky-blue.
When he didn't, you were in the usual everyday shit.
I don't know how he acquired this fine moral discernment.
Maybe it was the precipitate (crystaline) of he way he lived, for he was both fearless and defenseless.
Hence this touchstone of his unique purity.
From which we in our grubby ways, hugely benefitted.

DEATH OF A FRIEND

Saul Landau

I felt his passing
As loss of cells
Shreds of dna gasping
Falling onto liquid chasms
Not that the doctors
Made a mistake about
Contenital disorders bad lungs
But they had missed
Me and certainly others
Who comprised lost memories
Exiled banished away from
African soil worse than
Torture the acid evil
Odor of a world
Of Smiths and Jones
Drove his knuckle into
His rib cage drilling
so grief could escape
find a proper victim
who could not return
to familiar grass mountains
language colours of youth
in my kitchen chair
his nectar first erupted
a ruptured dam an
invisible shard puncturing membranes
of pent up sorrow
covered with patinas red
wine clouds of transient smoke
enveloping scenes of torture
when he had helped
some patriots who simply
wanted freedom from horror
what did doctors know
that he donated his
torture to medical science
offered charming radiating smiles
to cultured experts nodded
his head to one
Side to camouflage solitude
tried his best to
love the needy privileged
dilettantes who adored his
mask whofailed his
ests would not leave
him to ride his rosinante
on cold alien streets
lungs succumbed to loneliness
congenital sadness leaked from
brown pores projects undone
un-doable disrespected by collegues
an email from Amsterdam
a sudden throb blood
racing without finishlines
losing dots of memory
that morning Sheridan circle
sobbing in the lobby
now fear grips me
as if my limbs
had withered that piece
that only the noble
brown quijote had shared
he never enjoyed disciples
nor asked for services
his passing diminished me
I absorbed his lesson
desolation awaits us all