A reflective poem after the spirit of Masefield

I must take to the road again, to the long road and the sky,
Where the N1 runs thin through silence and the brown hills wander by;
Where the wind moves through the scrub beneath slow-rolling cloud,
And the Karoo opens slowly like a book across the land.

There are miles where time grows quiet on the tar that hums beneath,
Past the signposts for the N9, past the dust and winter heath;
And all I ask is the empty road and the wide unending air,
And the whisper of the wind’s breath in a land stripped bare.

There are windpumps standing patient where the empty flats run wide,
Their iron vanes slow-turning with the restless Karoo tide;
And the stillness holds its vigil past the wire and rusted post,
Where four sheep move like shadows on the pale and silent coast.

There are towns where time stands listening in the stoep shade and the dust—
Nieu-Bethesda, quiet keeper of small stories and of trust;
Where the people say, If they will not mend it, we will mend it still,
For the land belongs to those who love the wind upon the hill.

And there’s Graaff-Reinet beneath the mountains, where the stone streets twist and go,
Past the whispers of old questions that the restless travellers know;
Where a name may change like weather and the mind begins to spin—
Did a life reshape the valley, or the valley shape the man within?

Above it all the Camdeboo ranges rise in ragged lines of blue,
And the Valley of Desolation holds the evening’s fading hue;
Great pillars carved by patience, worn by ages into grace,
Like the ribs of some old continent showing through the earth’s wide face.

Then the dusk comes down the highway with a violet-burnished glow,
And the trucks begin their thunder where the N1 shadows go;
Their rumble rolls like ocean waves across the cooling land,
And the stars step out like lanterns lit by some unseen hand.

And long after their red tail-lights have vanished down the plain,
The Karoo keeps the silence — and the road dreams on again.