My father took me fishing, by which I mean drinking, by the brown waters of Riverton-on-Vaal.

That little bird, he said, and twisted the neck of a Lion Lager, is a Willie wagtail. See how he runs on the top of the water.

By the evening his beer bottles lay around us like sticks.

He offered a homeless boy the back seat of our Citroën, where I had to sleep. You guys can share the blanket, my father told us, and passed out on the ground under the gas and glass of the stars.

In the long night I knew the boy’s sharp elbows and the twigs of his legs: the smell of wet feathers.

In the morning I watched him fledge, head bobbing, eyes bright, untouched by the storied sludge.

I wait every day for news that the great writer has died.

Once or twice she makes an appearance for an award, sore but not showing it, yellowed at the edges, and sits among the people.

I try to stay close, to note some specific sermon from the mount. Surely she will share her hard-won commandments.

The last time I saw her she leaned on me in the winter gallery and said, Lemons.

I, eager for pith and rind, waited for the parable – the president nude in the afternoon, the thin dust of long-dead cattle, the night she dressed up in apron and doek to take the national prize – but it was lemons.

Before you squeeze them, she told me, you must put them in the microwave for twenty seconds.

Then, then, oh, you get the juice.

I lie like a block of butter in white paper: pale and sweating and full fat, too hot or too cold –

Still, spreadable.