MANIE

Old Manie
with the horns
tattooed on his forehead
one above each eye
high into his receded hairline
like the devil
the children taunted
but so far from the devil
was Manie
he tended the roses in the Parliament gardens
and was a gentle drunk

we used to leave our kitchen door
open at night for Manie
and a blanket on the floor
for when he couldn’t make
his way home; he, innocently dead-drunk
in the neighbourhood

a story was told to me about Manie
by his friend the blacksmith in the blacksmith’s yard
adjoining our kitchen door
that Manie was in fact
an English gentleman from good stock
who on his return from the great
war in France
all shell-shocked and broken
was turned away from his family
and quickly despatched to the Cape.

So here was Manie
a friend of the blacksmith
and our family friend
I used to help Manie blow the bellows in the
blacksmith shop and he drank wine with my brothers

very early one morning
after a terrible, terrible winter’s night
one brother, on his way to work, to catch the train
found Manie curled up on a bench
on Wittebome station
just across the road from us

He tugged at the sleeping Manie

but Manie was dead

one of us had mistakenly locked the door that night.