Ronelda Kamfer - vertaling in Engels
Ronelda S. Kamfer - vertaal deur/ translated by the Charl JF Cilliers and the author.
Ronelda Kamfer
Ronelda S. Kamfer was born in 1981 in Cape Town. She spent her childhood in Blackheath and Grabouw, and matriculated form Eersteriver Secondary School in 1999. She has worked as a nurse, a waitress and an administrative assistant at a marketing company. Her poetry has been published in Nuwe stemme 3, My ousie is ‘n blom, and in Bunker Hill. Her first volume of poetry, Noudat slapende honde (Now that sleeping dogs) was published in 2008 by Kwela Publishers. It has won the Eugène Marais Prize in 2009. It was also translated into Dutch as Nu de slapende honden (Podium). Her second volume of poetry, Grond/Santekraam, was pubished in 2011.
Shaun 2
people say druggies could help themselves
if they wanted to
people say the problem is the drugs
but my friend Shaun no longer believes
anything people say
he says if one day someone came to him
and told him how it felt to be 6 years
old and to sleep in the subway at Wyn-
berg Station he would perhaps listen
Shaun says if someone came and told him
how they slept in front of Kentucky
just to kinda be
near food he would perhaps listen
Shaun is fucking clever for someone
who has only had five years of schooling
he knows everything about everything
one day for my benefit
he recited
“like the park birds he came early
like the water he sat down”
“now that’s poetry, isn’t it”
he always said
Shaun was locked up on some or other
drug-related charge
shortly before his release he sent me
a letter to tell me when
he was coming out
and how maybe he was now ready to try
something different
“jail isn’t a place for a small person”
was the last line in his letter
a day before he was let out Shaun
was murdered
people said it was gang-related drugs his time
but I no longer believe what people say
(From: Grond/Santekraam. Kwela Boeke, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Martha
my mother’s name is Martha if
if one day someone asked me how much I
love her I would just say that when
I was four years old I walked
home with her in the dark
from a prayer meeting to where my
my dad was waiting to give her a beating
the moment she walked in my mother always
walked home quickly to her
other children and her husband
I had to struggle to keep up
then suddenly I began to cry
alone in the dark because all my
love for her meant nothing
(From: Grond/Santekraam. Kwela Boeke, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Distance
there is a distance in your eyes house palace
shanty pigsty that I go to
I grow still
the chaos inside and outside is like smoke
I grow still as soot a lightning flash an
orbit a crescent moon you strange
animal with cat’s eyes take me along take me
to a place with merry-go-round mountain
streams and worms that are solitaire
a place for my stick and hat
(From: Grond/Santekraam. Kwela Boeke, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Disastrous ending (oops)
“I’ve been working on a cocktail called grounds for divorce”
Elbow
a man like you is supposed to
make me happy you think for yourself
but do what I say your desk is
untidy and your eyes are lovely everything
I thought I wanted but now all
I see is how simple you look when you
are sleeping and how in the kitchen cupboard
you inspect the glasses and if god forbid
you find a smudge it actual-
ly makes you happy your intellectual friends
call ordinary people common while
every year at least three of them go
to Aardklop I now realise that
a man without issues is not for me
(Uncollected)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Translator:
|
Charl JF Cilliers was born in 1941 in Cape Town. Initially he went into the field of electronics and lectured for 4 years. He then joined Parliament as a translator in 1968 and retired in 1998 as Editor of Hansard. His first volume of poems West-Falling Light appeared in 1971, to be followed by Has Winter No Wisdom in 1978. His Collected Poems 1960 - 2008 appeared in 2008 and The Journey in 2010. His latest volume of poetry , A momentary stay. was published in 2011. He also published a volume of children’s poems, Fireflies Facing The Moon, in 2008. He has retired to the Cape West Coast where he continues to write. |
Bipolarhoney
I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here, I don’t belong here
Radiohead, ‘Creep’ (Pablo Honey)
i wish i could get up like yesterday
wash, get dressed, go to work like yesterday
but today is a different day
today, everything i know is lost and everything which is lost is me
maybe tomorrow will be better
if i can only get through the danger of today
© Translation: 2008, Ronelda Kamfer
***
Good girls
Good girls don’t join gangs
they don’t get pregnant at thirteen
they don’t wear tjappies
they don’t smoke weed
they don’t do meth
they don’t have sex with their teachers
or with taxi drivers
they don’t work for Shoprite
they are not the cleaners
good girls don’t live on the Cape Flats.
© Translation: 2008, Ronelda Kamfer
Translator’s Note: tjappies - gang-related tattoos
***
GOODNIGHT
for Candy, Emmie and Jessie
May the darkness treat you well
May silence mean peace
May the sounds and the shadows in the dark
Send you off into a heavenly sleep
And may you dream dreams
And never just sleep
© Translation: 2008, Ronelda Kamfer
LITTLE CARDO
for Alfonso Cloete and Velencia Farmer
They say it’s the whiteman I should fear, but it’s my own kind
doing all the killing here.
Tupac Amaru Shakur
Cardo was born
but not expected
his mother was sixteen
and his father community builder of the year
his grandmother was a cashier
and his stepgrandfather drank to ease the pain
Cardo was a beautiful child
with dark skin and light eyes
beautiful enough to speak English
he liked playing drie stokkies
and vrottie eier in the street
Tietie Gawa from the mobile said
that Cardo was heaven sent
On the eve of Cardo’s first day
at big school
schoolboys were playing with crackers in the street
Cardo looked through the window
the bullet lodged in his throat
his mother did not cry
the politicians planted a sapling
the Cape Doctor uprooted it
and threw it where the rest
of Cape Town’s dreams lay
on the Cape flats
© Translation: 2008, Ronelda Kamfer
Translator’s Note: drie stokkies - three sticks
vrottie eier - rotten egg
Cape Doctor - the wind
***
THE HOUSEWIFE
auntie Doris was a typical housewife
dropping her kids off at school every morning
dressed in a pink check overall, big green rollers in her hair
she cooked and cleaned and did her laundry
she was a housewife
one rainy day in June auntie Doris
did her regular housework, washing the clothes and the windows
watering the plants on her stoep
later a police van and two Tygerberg mortuary vans
pulled up in front of her house
three body bags on stretchers were pushed out
one big and two small
for the first time in years
auntie Doris wore a floral dress with her hair in luscious curls
down her back
she was handcuffed and climbed into the police van
telling the nosey crowd that we can look all we want
her house is clean.
© Translation: 2008, Ronelda Kamfer
