READ THIS
The poet describes an incident where his train had stopped at a siding in the karoo, a vast flat
semi-desert scrubland in the South African interior. A coal train rolled past them slowly -- truck
after truck that made the train appear never-ending. Nearby a horse and its foal frolicked, and
an old man with wrinkled face and black teeth passed by and smiled up at them.
THE POET & HIS POEM
Sydney Clouts was a South African poet. He was born in Cape Town in 1926 and educated
first at the South African College School and then at the University of Cape Town where he
obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950.
He worked in an insurance company and then as bookseller before moving into the publishing
world where he became editor for the International Press Agency in Cape Town. In 1961 he
relocated to London, where he would remain -- apart from an occasional visit to South Africa.
He began to write poetry in the 1950s and these were printed in South African magazines.
They had limited readership, however, which meant that he failed to receive any immediate
recognition.
Although Clouts wrote few poems, he is nevertheless remembered as one of the most creative
of South African poets. Indeed, in 1968 he received both the Olive Schreiner and the Ingrid
Jonker prizes for poetry.
He was married and had three sons, but died in 1982 at the age of 56.
His poem -- "Karoo Stop" -- recalls a vivid memory of a very long coal train passing
them while his passenger train was halted in a karoo siding.
The poet uses several interesting devices to present the length of the coal train and the
monotony of its rolling past them. He also plays with many words which rhyme with
"coal". Can you work out why?
Have you looked at the questions in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer the following questions:
How many words can you find that rhyme -- or are half-rhymes -- with
"coal"? (2)
[Need help?]
Let's count them:
whole, coal, soul, hole, (slowly), roll (x7), goal, control, foal, coal-black, foal, stroll, coal, patrol,
mole, cold, old (x2), old, coal.
That makes 26, doesn't it? Or have I left any out?
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What words in this poem tell you that the coal train was passing very slowly? (4)
[Need help?]
Look at words like "passed us slowly", "roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll",
"dragged painfully" and "crawl and crawl".
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"A horse and a foal
beyond were meagre to it, coal-
black horse and foal,
and far-off clouds stroll white
in little mounds, and the coal
in mounds and piles that crawl
and crawl."
- What does the poet mean when he says that a horse and a foal were "meagre to
it"? (2)
[Need help?]
The poet is speaking of size here. Normally, a horse would appear fairly big but, in comparison
to the coal train, it is very small.
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- Why should the coal be "in mounds and piles"? (2)
[Need help?]
As a rule, the coal trucks were heaped to their capacity and would have appeared to be in
mounds in each truck.
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"A sigh, a grunt from us all,
with one exception: I saw patrol
like a mole
underground, through walls
of skewer patience, cold and fire,
an old old
man's sharp smile, an old
man wrinkled small
with teeth like coal."
- Why should there have been "a sigh, a grunt from us all"? (4)
[Need help?]
The train line through the karoo back in about 1950 was just a single track, with trains travelling
along it in both directions. They could only pass at periodic sidings, and the train that reached
the siding first would have to wait for the oncoming train.
This could take a while -- sometimes as much as half-an-hour or more. The passengers
would become very bored, sitting there in their cramped compartments. In this case, the
coal train was very long and appears to have been crawling passed, truck after truck after truck
-- causing the passengers to sigh or grunt from frustration.
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- Why was the old man an exception? (2)
[Need help?]
All the passengers were very frustrated at having to wait in the siding for so long but the old
man was smiling up at them. He might have had little else to do other than watch the trains go
by -- or he was working alongside the train collecting rubbish -- and he was enjoying the
experience of smiling at the passengers. After all, passenger trains would have been few and
far between.
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- Why does the poet repeat three times that the man was old? (2)
[Need help?]
Does the poet not want to emphasise the man's age? He was not just old but old, old, old.
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- Why should the old man's teeth be "like coal"? (2)
[Need help?]
The poet leaves this to our imagination. Perhaps the old man's teeth were rotten. Perhaps he
was a heavy smoker and so his teeth were blackened by the nicotine. Perhaps he had a few
front teeth missing and so there were black holes where his teeth should have been -- but
from a distance they looked like black teeth.
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