10 AUGUST 1951, Page 10

Cape Point

This is the end of Africa And still the sunshine is our familiar, Tempered now by the winds of two oceans; Here by kind permission of man The stilted remote ostrich, The inquisitive baboon that peers at us, And clutches its uneasy progeny, The rock rabbit and the shy green bird, That flickers by the roadside, go unmolested.

This is the end of Africa— The striped and burning sunlight, The circle of shade spilt by the drooping tree, Lips overblown in faces Impenetrably black Or cracked wide open in a smile.

We mount the concrete way To gaze on the confluence of two oceans, And startle each other with the thought That nothing but sea as wide and cold As the divisions 'of the human heart Lies between this spot and Antarctica.

A. McGEocn.