Homecoming (a poem)

Many years ago (in the 90s) I visited England on business. It created quite a bit of emotional confusion for me, especially as it was a period of upheaval in South Africa. So I wrote this poem.

Homecoming

Suspended between worlds in Departures, beyond Security,
not yet out, but forbidden to turn back,
one hovers in a shiny space filled with things to sit on.
The journey itself uneventful, even tedious,
lacks all sensation of travel, of flying the length unseen
of a continent and the width of the widest sea,
or approaching an island, uncommonly green.

Heathrow is huge and hurrying, yet orderly, even reassuring.
The shuttle bus driver knew and liked my country.
Driving a Volkswagen on the usual left,
I found the M4 without difficulty. Heavier traffic,
but unmistakably a freeway, familiar if not tame –
even the signs were colour correct.
I drove toward Bristol as if it were Bloemfontein.

The English countryside is green, green upon green and leafy,
like illustrated nursery rhymes and the pictures in story books,
or like desired results in gardening magazines.
Many buildings are older than the colonies; they breathe
the atmospheres of cherished literature, of history
I learned in school. And everyone spoke my language,
with irritating accents, but without mystery.

It was not novelty but familiarity that disturbed,
like the shock of déja vu. A hemisphere from home,
nevertheless, at home. For isn't home the place
of understood meanings, where the weight and worth
of things are granted, and unquestioned customs stand?
There one goes unnoticed for there one has always been.
A member of the family, I was camouflaged and bland.

Returning to this hybrid culture, it was strange to feel again
not embedded, but precarious, dangling on the fringe.
Meadows and the Queen's English are deep and dear,
as owned as Afrikaans and koppies in dry landscapes,
but I am no colonist, no matter how those winds blow.
Living without a tribe is insecure, lonely.
The home fires burn low.