A Room with No One in It
speaks with copper-tipped tongues,
makes more rumblings against silence
than any riotous crowd in the market.
The dead’s presence is there as it never was
in the days of dinner parties,
hellos and goodbyes, teacups, roses.
A classroom screams out children’s names,
the great hall shouts of all those who will come
or have just left. Everything is there or will be soon.
There truth trembles, shimmers as light on a lake
at sunset, prepares itself in that pregnant space,
waits to let loose every never-said word.
Carol Hamilton taught 2nd grade through graduate school in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, was a medical translator and storyteller. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has published and received various awards for 18 books and chapbooks of poetry, children’s novels, and legends and has been nominated nine times for a Pushcart Prize.
Griet van der Meulen was born in 1956 in the province of Mpumalanga, where she has a small gallery in Graskop, mainly to serve as a platform for local artists, who otherwise would not have the opportunity to exhibit their work. She has taken part in many local and overseas exhibitions in Canada and Germany. In 1991 she was awarded the Schweikerdt Prize for excellence in painting. In 2001 the Mpumalanga Government and German Frauen Kunstforum sponsored her for a residency in Dortmund Germany. Griet also lived in Ottawa for four years where she was part of a group of artists called The Women’s Environmental Network. She has taken part in various exhibitions, and her work is on permanent display in the Graskop Gallery.