It is a poem that took 11 years to write. Read it and you will see why. The second is the title poem. It is a deeply-felt and powerfully expressed plaint about the historical amnesia that has struck South Africans of all persuasions, inclinations and affiliations since 1994. I am not sure what the aesthetic is.
Art is the struggle to stay awake.
In another poem, configured as a parable, Cronin likens the conquering mythology of the World Bank with the Xhosa cattle killing of 1856-7. Many will want to argue with this, and it is a pity that Cronin's absorbing rhetorical and lyrical locutions are not also published in the Sunday Times and taken up into a much broader public reception. And still, despite Cronin's mere 44 pages, much, much more. But don't stop there. Read Lionel Abrahams too, and Basil du Toit, and Ingrid de Kok, and Chris Mann, and many others in our rich undergrowth of poetry.