Antjie Krog – translated by/ vertaal deur outeur/author, Denis Hirson, Richard Jürgens, Karen Press and Tony Ullyatt
 - Antjie Krog
Antjie Krog was born in 1952 and grew up on a farm in the Kroonstad District of the Free State Province in South Africa. She is the daughter of Willem Krog and Dot Serfontein, herself a writer with whom Krog has a complex relationship of connection and disconnection as literary foremother. She studied at the University of the Free State (BA 1973, BA Hons 1976), the University of Pretoria (MA 1983) and UNISA (Teacher’s Diploma). During the 1980s she taught at a high school and teachers’ college in Kroonstad. In 1993 she became editor of the journal Die Suid-Afrikaan (The South African), based in Cape Town. From 1995 to 2000 she worked for the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) as a radio journalist, reporting on the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commision from 1996 to 1998. During this time she also wrote articles for newspapers and journals.She has read from her work at various international literary festivals, been keynote speaker at a variety of conferences and lectured extensively on aspects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in England, Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. In 2004 she was appointed professor extraordinaire at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town. She is married to architect John Samuel, and has four children and three grandchildren.
Krog’s first volume Dogter van Jefta was published in 1970 when she was 17 years old, following adverse publicity about the poem ‘My mooi land’ (‘My beautiful land’) published in a school yearbook. To date Krog has published ten volumes of poetry as well as three volumes of children’s verse in Afrikaans. Her poetry is strongly autobiographical, depicting the progressive stages of her private experience within the larger context of public life in South Africa. It is also characterised by a constant reflection on the writer’s aesthetic, political and ethical responsibilities. Whereas her first four collections, published in the 1970s, focused mostly on the private experience of the female adolescent and student, the young married woman and mother, the volumes published in the 1980s became increasingly politicised. These books gave voice to a transgressive gender consciousness (Otters in bronslaai, 1981) and made use of historical material to engage with the oppressive policies of the apartheid government (Jerusalemgangers, 1985 and Lady Anne, 1989).
Krog’s first collection to be published in the nineties (Gedigte 1989-1995, 1995) was a deliberate attempt to move away from the complexity of the previous volumes and used thematic material not normally found in poetry (peeing in township toilets, for instance). Kleur kom nooit alleen nie (2000) grappled with defining her own position in post-apartheid South Africa as well as finding a place for herself in the larger context of Africa. The next volume was published simultaneously in Afrikaans and English as Verweerskrif / Body Bereft (2006), eliciting controversy for its candid account of the menopausal woman and ageing female body. Her most recent publication is Waar ek jy word / Waar ik jou word (2009), a slim collection of Afrikaans poems with Dutch translations published as the National Poetry Day booklet in the Netherlands.
Krog’s poetry is strongly metaphorical, intensely lyrical and passionate in its engagement with both the private and the political spheres of life (the main character in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Diary of a Bad Year refers to the “white heat” of her work). She mostly uses the free-verse form, but also has the ability to vary her use of poetic forms and to build densely constructed cycles and volumes.
Krog started publishing prose in the 1990s, developing a unique form of autobiographical writing which combines factual with fictional and lyrical elements. The best known of these works is her account of reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Country of my Skull (1998). It was her first work to be published in English and brought her international recognition. She has also written a play, Waarom is die wat voor toyi-toyi altyd so vet? which was performed at arts festivals in South Africa in 1999.
Since the late 1990s, Krog has also established herself as a translator. She has translated Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (2001), works by Henk van Woerden and Tom Lanoye, as well as a selection of South African verse written in the indigenous African languages into Afrikaans. This was followed by a reworking of narratives in the extinct language /Xam into Afrikaans poems in Die sterre sê ‘tsau’ and English poems in The stars say ‘tsau’ (2004).
She has won major awards in almost all the genres she has worked in: poetry, journalism, fiction and translation. Her work has been translated into English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Serbian.
- Louise Viljoen
|
Christmas before the first democratic election
after the rains
the veld gives herself like a slut to the green
of bleak barren plains suddenly nothing
to be seen everything feasts everything
carouses green among thorn trees and braggart tussles
is the vapour of jitters and glue-lick
the hump of karee the foxtrot of wild olive
and for Christmas the cat-bush tiptoes red stipples
wait, see there: the ginger-green pools swell every afternoon
ample with boons of clouds reflecting lightning white
the excess is so unimpaired
so sudden
so cicada-singing
so well-disposedly generous
that it attests to a bloody insensitivity about us
us to whom these velds belong
lied and belied we feel we to whom these velds belong
eroded bewildered assaulted we feel we to whom these velds belong
we fold out hands around our share of chicken and trifle
perhaps the last Christmas together like this
this, on this farm
(From: Gedigte 1989 - 1995, Hond, (1995))
(Tr. by the author)
narratives from a stone-desert called Richtersveld
narrative of Griet Farmer of Eksteenfontein
“I am very close to cattle
a house is nothing for me
but the open veld
I got length in the open veld
in a small round house
when we arrived here it was raining
and the daisies were so high
that when I squatted I was sitting under a floor of flowers
from that day I adopted this stony place
and love it until now
for the disposition
for the veld
the man-of-the-park fetched us one day
to show us the park where our cattle once grazed
but there was a puffadder in the road and the man stopped
drive over that thing, kill it, I shouted, it only wants to poison us
no, said the parksman and waited patiently for the snakething
to cross the road
he showed us the halfhuman
but really, that I am used to
but my eyes stabbed this way and that
for that bulb that we used to eat in the veld
it had such funny fingers
and myself and Kowa’s mouth were watering
Kowa even took a knife to clean it of thorns
and so we walked and searched while the others were at the halfhuman
here I found it! the !Xona and I tore off a piece
but the man said you may not simply take a piece
and I told the man
what shall we do we have eaten this since a long time
then he said it should be protected for your children
then I said but our children do not eat bulbs
then he said Kowa and I may each take one
Kowa silently pocketed another small one
but I am at peace now
I know they still grow somewhere”
(From: Kleur kom nooit alleen nie. Kwela Boeke, 2000)
(Tr. by the author)
narrative of old nomadic movement patterns
in the winter the people from Paulscorner move to Lostcourage, Hump, Goodmanswater, Ditchling, Dams, One Willow and Pits. The people from Redfountain pitch their place for grazing at Carpetthingvalley, Kammassies, Thickheadkraal and Turn. From Narrowriver lies the road through Ownedwater, Khiribes, Baboonscorner, Hosabes en Redheight. Depending on the rain Spittleriver moves to Scissormountain, Wheathigh and Partrichvalley, Stonefountain move to Newvalley, Greywater and Governmentwell. Tworivers to Wavekraal and Hareriver. Oom Jakobus moves from Ochta to Smallpoxtit and later to Oena. Ploughmountain. Bigentrails. Windblow. Kabies.
”This pattern was completely overturned by the establishment of economic units.”
Land Use in Namaqualand by Henry Krohne and Lala Steyn
narrative of goatfarmer Oom Jakobus de Wet
“around Jerusalem are mountains
here alone with the goats in the veld
are also mountains
but all around is God
the whole evening I feel Him coming from this side of Lizardvalley
the beginning of me
was at Tattasberg mountain which they now call Richtersveld
herding goats the jackal gorge from the buttock to the stomach
the baboon is different he doesn’t catch, he takes
he tears open at the hips
in order to thread the entrails
my grandchild Benjamin does the herding
his mouth told this to me this morning
himself he said he wanted to be a goatherd
and I am satisfied
God put into everybody his own talent
at night at the camp we needn’t talk
we know where grazing took place and where it should take place
it is a good life to give to a child
every child has his honour
let me say it
it is tasty to be with a grandchild
he makes me laugh
he let me say untoward things
it is good to be with him
because day and night one is alone here at the post with Christ
we talk
you can lie back
and look at Him with clear eyes
you only have to look
because spirit is always aware of spirit
my goats are branded: swallowtail and half moon in front
try-square and swallowtail at the other ear
government has given me a stud ram
a carcassholding ram a real praise goat
among my goats I can never do apartheid
my goats are one
then the blessing of the Lord is there
but if I divide
I will bring my end
over midday the heat sets firmly in the hills
stones are bleached into blue
at the camp between ebony and karee
oom Jakobus turns the colon upside down
and spreads kidneyfat like breath over the branches
the shadelet is so shallow he mutters next to the slaughtered orrogoat
on the radio on a tin
Cobus Bester reads the one o’clock news in Afrikaans
fragile lies the river
open artery in the heat
the landscape unthinkable without this browngreen cut
undestructibly older than the oldest human breath on stone
it feeds the goats of dream and the goats of dying
of nothing too many
of nothing too utterly few
the mountain on the other side looks as if it’s leaking
against the midday hour the mountain slakes in blue
strains away in tainted bronze
the first vygies hiss in cianide
when the sun looks out I am there I am there in lavender blue
I look at my watch
it is twenty minutes to three
and it means nothing absolutely nothing
we drowse between shade and grazing and heat
the sun at last tilts
the ridges echo of bleating as the big goats turn homewards
the strapped lambs fight with the riempies
nothing as soft as lambkin of goat
nothing as snouty
as delicately mouthed defencelessly eyed
as lambkin of goat in the evening when dusks sets in
some get teat some foreign teat
and its big bleat to flat bleat to smallforlorn bleat
to gay bleat to moan bleat to spoilt bleat
to the vexed bleat of boss bleat
the velvet of a lamkin of goat’s ear
slips through my palm
how do I follow the lines towards you love
when the late light knells along the stones
how do I remember my shivering body in your hand
while you nibble down my spine
how do I grow you here love
next to the great river
so that the past brackish bitter year
can be sedimented into love?’
the goats come home
short woolen waterfalls plunge from the trees
in the late noon dust
lambs and kraal and goat beards
flickering piss and square droppings
like the diamonds it also has form here
two nipples callous knees
whatever they’ve eaten let them fart tonight
little horns like horny wings
which could be pure angel
but the transparent striped eyes of a male goat
speaks of the devil complaining to satan, says Benjamin
and outside his nephew Joseph is preaching
over there on the hill he stands swinging his arms
his voice blown in texts down to us
joseph preaches for the stones the valleys
to the river he sings
to the goats the night he preaches
this child is an embarrassment to me grumbles oom Jakobus
colour never comes alone he says
colour never comes alone
(From: Kleur kom nooit alleen nie. Kwela Boeke, 2000)
(Tr. by the author)
WHERE I BECOME YOU (1. )
1.
you come to win me over
at the other end of the world
I hear your call
shivering night blue and blindly
bound by radiant bones
with you my head bitingly cold
unwillingly hairgrown
scentgirded
you begin to unfasten the I from the self
the inviolable once
you let loose in many
separating-laying-side-by-side
loosening one piece from another
so that the bonds seem incessantly to unfold
in the unbearably co-writing
breath of unsundered roses
to dis-
mantle
the I
from the also-I
the you
from the almost-
you-in-me
listen, you say, how un-
fathomably it grieves,
the profoundness of love
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
From: Where I Become You
Publisher: First published on PIW, Rotterdam, 2009
© 2009, Antjie Krog
From: Waar ik jou word
Publisher: Poetry International / Uitgeverij Podium, Rotterdam / Amsterdam, 2009
ISBN: 9-789057-592980
***
WHERE I BECOME YOU (4. )
overwhelmed by the whisper of our
capacity to grip
this kneadable earth’s mantle
can I not be not-you
you not be no-one
we not be nowhere
the unheard-of befitting word
not be unsaid by us
my heart falters - more weightless than before
yet bridgeable
there where I am other than you
I begin
it’s true
but there where I am you
have become you
I sing beyond myself
light pulses of quicksilversong
a thing cast beyond all humankind
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
© 2009, Antjie Krog
From: Waar ik jou word
Publisher: Poetry International / Uitgeverij Podium, Rotterdam / Amsterdam, 2009
ISBN: 9-789057-592980
***
WHERE I BECOME YOU (9. )
9.
autumn the singularity from your sleep before dawn
all signals roam through your tongue
and we hold each other’s blood in trust
my lived one
my faithsong enraptured
your non-negotiable breath
makes of us separate ones
in the course of time
o my embodied love
lingering in gravity, all-powerful: us
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
Publisher: First published on PIW, Rotterdam, 2009
© 2009, Antjie Krog
From: Waar ik jou word
Publisher: Poetry International / Uitgeverij Podium, Rotterdam / Amsterdam, 2009
ISBN: 9-789057-592980
***
COUNTRY OF GRIEF AND GRACE
a.
between you and me
how desperately
how it aches
how desperately it aches between you and me
so much hurt for truth
so much destruction
so little left for survival
where do we go from here
your voice slung
in anger
over the solid cold length of our past
how long does it take
for a voice
to reach another
in this country held bleeding between us
b.
in the beginning is seeing
seeing for ages
filling the head with ash
no air
no tendril
now to seeing speaking is added
and the eye plunges into the wounds of anger
seizing the surge of language by its soft bare skull
hear oh hear
the voices all the voices of the land
all baptised in syllables of blood and belonging
this country belongs to the voices of those who live in it
this landscape lies at the feet at last
of the stories of saffron and amber
angel hair and barbs
dew and hay and hurt
c.
speechless I stand
whence will words now come?
for us the doers
the hesitant
we who hang quivering and ill
from this soundless space of an Afrikaner past?
what does one say?
what the hell does one do
with this load of decrowned skeletons origins shame and ash
the country of my conscience
is disappearing forever like a sheet in the dark
d.
we carry death
in a thousand cleaving spectres
affected
afflicted
we carry death
it latches its mouth to our heart
it sucks groaningly
how averse lures the light on our skin
it knows
our people carry death
it resembles ourselves
ou stomachs wash black with it
a pouch of ink
we carry death into the houses
and a language without mercy
suddenly everything smells of violence
death snaps its repentless valves in our language
yes, indefatigable meticulous death
e.
deepest heart of my heart
heart that can only come from this soil
brave
with its teeth firmly in the jugular of the only truth that matters
and that heart is black
I belong to that blinding black African heart
my throat bloats with tears
my pen falls to the floor
I blubber behind my hand
for one brief shimmering moment this country
ths country is also truly mine
and my heart is on its feet
f.
because of you
this country no longer lies
between us buth within
it breathes becalmed
after being wounded
in its wondrous throat
in the cradle of my skull
it sings it ignites
my tongue my inner ear the cavity of heart
shudders towards the outline
new in soft intimate clicks and gutturals
I am changed for ever I want to say
forgive me
forgive me
forgive me
you whom I have wronged, please
take me
with you
g.
this body bereft
this blind tortured throat
the price of this country of death
is the size of a heart
grief comes so lonely
as the voices of the anguished drown on the wind
you do not lie down
you open up a pathway with slow sad steps
you cut me loose
into light - lovelier, lighter and braver than song
may I hold you my sister
in this warm fragile unfolding of the word humane
h.
what does one do with the old
which already robustly stinks with the new
the old virus slyly manning the newly installed valves
how does one recognise the old
with its racism and slime
its unchanging possessive pronoun
what is the past tense of the word hate
what is the symptom of brutalised blood
of pain that did not want to become language
of pain that could not become language
what does one do with the old
how do you become yourself among others
how do you become whole
how do you get released into understanding
how do you make good
how do you cut clean
how close can the tongue tilt to tenderness
or the cheek to forgiveness?
a moment
a line which says: from this point onwards
it is going to sound differently
because all our words lie next to one another on the table now
shivering in the colour of human
we know each other well
each other’s scalp and smell each other’s blood
we know the deepest sound of each other’s kidneys in the night
we are slowly each other
anew
new
and here it starts
i.
(but if the old is not guilty
does not confess
then of course the new can also not not be guilty
nor be held accountable
if it repeats the old
things may then continue as before
but in a different shade)
© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa,
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8
***
LAND
under orders from my ancestors you were occupied
had I language I could write for you were land my land
but me you never wanted
no matter how I stretched to lie down
in rustling blue gums
in cattle lowering horns into Diepvlei
rippling the quivering jowls drink
in silky tassels in dripping gum
in thorn trees that have slid down into emptiness
me you never wanted
me you could never endure
time and again you shook me off
you rolled me out
land, slowly I became nameless in my mouth
now you are fought over
negotiated divided paddocked sold stolen mortgaged
I want to go underground with you land
land that would not have me
land that never belonged to me
land that I love more fruitlessly than before
© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
© Karen Press
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa,
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8
***
MA WILL BE LATE
that I come back to you
tired and without memory
that the kitchen door is open I
shuffle in with suitcases hurriedly bought presents
my family’s distressed dreams
slink down the corridor the windows stained
with their abandoned language in the hard
bathroom light I brush my teeth
put a pill on my tongue: Thur
that I walk past where my daughter sleeps
her sheet neatly folded beneath her chin
on the dressing table silkworms rear in gold
that I can pass my sons
frowning like fists against their pillows
their restless undertones bruise the room
that I can rummage a nightie from the drawer
slip into the dark slit behind your back
that the warmth flows across to me
makes me neither poet nor human
in the ambush of breath
I die into woman
© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa,
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8
***
my words of love grow more tenuous than the sound of lilac
my language frayed
dazed and softened I feel myself through your stubborn struggle
you still hold me close like no-one else
you still choose my side like no-one else
against your chest I lie and I confess
you hunt my every gesture
you catch up with me everywhere
you pull me down between bush and grass
on the footpath you turn me around
so that I must look you in the eye
you kick me in the testicles
you shake me by the skin of my neck
you hold me, prick in the back, on the straight and narrow
© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
© Karen Press
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa, 2000
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8
***
NARRATIVE OF THE CATTLE FARMER
Uncle Jacobus de Wet talks in poems
‘near Jerusalem there are mountains
here alone with the goats in the veld
there are also mountains
but God is all around us
I feel him approaching all evening from the direction of Akkediskloof (Lizard Canyon)
my grandchild Benjamin does the herding
he told me so himself this morning
even said he wanted to be a cattle farmer
and I’m content
God has given everyone a talent
in the evenings in the pasture we don’t have to talk
we know which have been pastured and which have yet to be pastured
it’s a good life to give a child
every child has his honour
let me just say this
it is very pleasant to be with a grandchild
he makes you laugh
he lets you talk about things that aren’t really relevant
it’s good to be with a child
because you’re alone here day and night in the pasture with Jesus
you talk
you can lie back
and with clear eyes talk to him
you only have to look
because flesh notices flesh
the river lies defenceless
open vein in the heat
the landscape unthinkable without that brown-green cut
indestructible older than the oldest human breath on stone
he feeds the goats whether they live or die
there isn’t much of nothing here
there’s much too little of nothing here
the mountain on the other side looks as if it’s leaking
at midday it is extinguished in blue
I look at the watch
it’s twenty to three
and that means absolutely nothing
we doze between coolness and eating and heat
the sun sinks at last
the ridges echo with blaring as the big goats come in to pasture
the lambs are tied up and pulling at their tethers
nothing as soft as goat’s lamb
(my language remembers)
nothing so sweet snouty
sweet to the mouth defenceless-looking as goat’s lamb
towards evening
some get their mother’s tit some get a strange tit
from full blaring to flat blaring to lost blaring
to muffled blaring to whining blaring to spoiled blaring
to irritated bossy blaring
the satin of a lamb’s ear
slips through my hand
‘how do I tie my line to you my love
when the late light strikes stone’
a colour never comes alone she says
when the ridges float and fall in blue folds of satin
the pleated mountains turn to fire
and amber
the river stills into reflecting streaks of jelly
it’s feeling time and flying time
in the violence of colour and reeds
a heron flies silently through the valley
redbreast fly-catchers, tufted ducks, seed eaters
bunched in tassels on the grassy bank by my tent
the mountain hides its stone in the water
there’s a shivering of stone and river willows and reeds
frightened by sound a dove falls from the crag
I sleep on the bank of The River
the whole day it flows past me quiet and broad like blood
from a wound - above me lie the chippings of stars
the night opens itself -
soon colour loses its original way
© Translation: 2004, Richard Jürgens
***
NARRATIVE OUTSIDE THE PARK
Susara Domroch of Kubus
‘well I’ll vote for Grandpa Mandela
why is it that you’re someone these days if you’re Nama?
because we’re now our own word
under the old governments we were their word
for many years we were driven to the barren places
Coloured Reserves
we were nothing
but today we’re something
and it’s him, that Granddad Mandela, it’s him
no, Mandela’s lot have got my vote’
the church in Kubus stands white against the quartzite sky
and echoes its voice among the ridges
‘o God blow and bloom your love for us’
says Uncle Adam
the congregation sing with their hands on their hearts
‘yes Jesus is a rock
in a thi-ir-sty land
a thi-ir-sty land
a thi-ir-sty land
you are like breath to me
Je-sus Je-ee-ee-sus’
Kubus hangs on the edge of Raisin Mountain
God it takes a lot to survive out here
Mrs Farmer of Eksteensfontein
‘I’m just very attached to cattle
a house isn’t for me
but the open country
I grew up like this in the open country
in a little round house
when we came here it was raining
and the marigolds were growing high
when I squatted I sat under a floor of flowers
so I made a place of my own
that I still love
for the earth
for the country’
© Translation: 2004, Richard Jürgens
***
NEITHER FAMILY NOR FRIENDS
tonight everything speaks through the dead
towards me
your brittle bundle of bones
my longestloved beloved
lies lonely and longingly cradled somewhere lost
and lean
I am overwhelmingly awake tonight
of me so little has become
you are all I had in this world
beloved deathling
alone and cold it is behind my ribs
Africa had me giving up all
it is so dark
it is so bleak
soft beloved taunter
of me so little has become
I am down
to my last skin
© Translation: 2000, Antjie Krog
From: Down to my last skin
Publisher: Random House, South Africa,
ISBN: 0 9584195 5 8
***
SONGS OF THE BLUE CRANE
(//Kabbo sings the blue crane’s story; he sings over his shoulder that the berries of the karee tree are on his shoulder; he sings as he walks)
I
the berries are on my shoulder
the berries are on my shoulder
the berries, they’re on my shoulder
the berries are on my shoulder
the berries are here, above (on my shoulder)
Rrrú is here above
the berries are here above
rrrú is here above
is here above
the berries rrú are safe (on my shoulder)
II
(while he is running away from someone)
a splinter of stone that’s white
a splinter of stone that’s white
a splinter of stone that’s white
III
(while he is walking slowly, calmly and at a steady pace)
a white stone splinters
a white stone splinters
IV
(when he flaps his wings)
scrape (the springbok for) a bed
scrape (the springbok for) a bed
Rrrrú rrra
Rrrú rrra
Rrú rra
Poet’s Note: According to //Kabbo, the blue crane describes his own white-feathered head, which has the form of a splintered stone. The Bushmen made stone tools for the hunt and for use as cutting implements.
© Translation: 2004, Richard Jürgens
***
WHAT THE STARS SAY
(fragment)
the stars take your heart
because the stars aren’t the least bit hungry for you!
the stars exchange your heart for the heart of a star
the stars take your heart and feed you the heart of a star
then you’ll never be hungry again
because the stars say: ‘Tsau! Tsau!’
and the bushmen say the stars curse the springbok’s eyes
the stars say: ‘Tsau!’ they say: ‘Tsau! Tsau!’
they curse the springbok’s eyes
I grew up listening to the stars
the stars say: ‘Tsau! Tsau!’
it’s always summer when you hear the stars saying Tsau
© Translation: 2004, Richard Jürgens
***
Where I Become You
When your skin screamed my bones caught fire.
Hugo Claus
1.
you come to win me over
at the other end of the world
I hear your call
shivering night blue and blindly
bound by radiant bones
with you my head bitingly cold
unwillingly hairgrown
scentgirded
you begin to unfasten the I from the self
the inviolable once
you let loose in many
separating-laying-side-by-side
loosening one piece from another
so that the bonds seem incessantly to unfold
in the unbearably co-writing
breath of unsundered roses
to dis-
mantle
the I
from the also-I
the you
from the almost-
you-in-me
listen, you say, how un-
fathomably it grieves,
the profoundness of love
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
2.
your vowels die passing me
so close that I
could have been the one
endless the static cargo of stars
that sputtering in the night shackles us
but you that I could have been
but was not yet, you shuffle
stubbornly you sift to bestowed profusion
each leaf that falls
falls alone, I counter
your face grinds to a halt
I want
the I that is I
to stay
but where
does it begin,
this being-I?
at the place
where the I is like you
or there where the I is other than you?
my tongue goes deaf
your eyes coo from the sockets of the lost ones
just a breathlick of light
pomegranate pip light
between where I-am is
and not-you is
I decay - grit in the throat
your vowels die passing
so close
that my eyelid welds itself to your love
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
3.
stars tongueblind and dying in gravitation
you come
heartstained and upwards
you come
your crystal breath
and the mouthclose sound of birds
stars tongueblind
stars dying
stars breathtakingly closest galactic sight
unwon I must become
unfastened
with wrists that can pile up stars
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
4.
overwhelmed by the whisper of our
capacity to grip
this kneadable earth’s mantle
can I not be not-you
you not be no-one
we not be nowhere
the unheard-of befitting word
not be unsaid by us
my heart falters - more weightless than before
yet bridgeable
there where I am other than you
I begin
it’s true
but there where I am you
have become you
I sing beyond myself
light pulses of quicksilversong
a thing cast beyond all humankind
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
5.
dismantled starfoam
stripped
swaggering starheaps of ruin
dust that thickens latent and formless
gravity’s force imposes her will
and gone at once
all sheltering
vulnerably reeling clots form their blades of light
stars vulnerable
stars pockmarked
how the spiral arms linger
around the new stately tilting tenderness
how chaotic the swirling
starspittle
starfoamfog
we could have been the ones together
if we could have recruited each other more bloodily
but now you come to recover me
at the other end of this giddy world
to be taken-apart-set-down
the nails in blood
the milk in bones
the phosphorus in the cortex
we, yes we consist of stardust
stars tongueblind
stars dying
so unimaginably we roar
so gigantically we carry our equilibrium
that, when we are cold
we glow as we burn
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
6.
to reach the point
beyond the uttering of the I
the point
of the I so multitudinous
that it no longer matters
to say I
that the I is no longer itself
but discernible
multiples
of the hopelessly lovable shadows
of your collarbone
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
7.
the winter wind
my littlest
my leftbehind
jasmine-draped skull
describes our shadow against the stone
against the wall we are
one
but your wound
keeps reflecting if I
look at you
separately
from inside the scent of your deepest arm
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
8.
you
the true you
the yes-you
the grass still rustles from your ankles just
now each time I look up
turning away
departing
beloved
astral birdsong wrapped in night
come!
let a word come right through you
let more come than I
more than the undermining mine
the perjuring mine
the endlessly l-ing mine
let us become
unglowing nakedly
unmoved
that which we never
could have become alone
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
***
9.
autumn the singularity from your sleep before dawn
all signals roam through your tongue
and we hold each other’s blood in trust
my lived one
my faithsong enraptured
your non-negotiable breath
makes of us separate ones
in the course of time
o my embodied love
lingering in gravity, all-powerful: us
Poet’s Note: .
Background Sources:
Govert Schilling, Evoluerend Heelal - de biografie van de kosmos, Fontaine Uitgewers Davidsfonds/Leuven, 2003
Paul Celan, Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan (translated by John Felstiner), W.W. Norton New York & London, 2001
© Translation: 2009, Karen Press
Poems published with the kind permission by Poetry International Web
*********************************************
birth
at last this lovely little mammoth godawful in roses and blood
straining lovely between my legs tore loose
tumbled, no slipped out besmeared into my arms yelling birth
yelling pain yelling strength oh I throb throb throb about my
boychild my onlyest my loveliest my smallest my most superlative sound
wash him with colostrum
his arms next to his body wrap him in nappies
in a manger of songs shy murmurs from a twilight room
and feed him
feed him oh free feed him from my heart
(Translated by Denis Hirson)
how and with what?
I dig rennets from the sink sieve
oats and rinds burp into the drain outside the window
the nappy liners are being stunk out into the toilet
the dirty nappies sunlight soaped
bottoms washed powdered
the one cries with hunger
the other with anger
the eldest with his nervous vegetable knife voice
carves a whole superman flight through the noise
my man closes the door against us all
and turns up the Mozart piano concerto
and I go crazy
my voice yells a mixerpulpershreddermincer
my nose leaks like a fridge
my eyes quake like eggs in boiling water
my ears are post boxes pouting with calendars and junk mail
my children assault me with their rowdiness
selfishness
cheekiness
destructiveness
their fears complexes insecurities threats needs
beat my “image as mother” into soft steak on the wooden floor
I smell of vomit and shit and sweat
of semen and leeks
I illustrate a kitchen
with hair whipping dull against novilon skin
the milk coupons of my back bent uninterestedly inside the gown
the legs veined like blue soap
slippers like pot scourers
I sulk like a flour bag
I am chipped like a jug
my hands drier and older than yesterday’s toast
give half-hearted slaps against the clamour
I go outside and sit on the step this Sunday morning
neither sober nor embarrassed
wondering
how and with what does one survive this?
(Translated by Denis Hirson)
Narrative outside the park
Susara Domroch of Kubus
‘well I’ll vote for Grandpa Mandela
why is it that you’re someone these days if you’re Nama?
because we’re now our own word
under the old governments we were their word
for many years we were driven to the barren places
Coloured Reserves
we were nothing
but today we’re something
and it’s him, that Granddad Mandela, it’s him
no, Mandela’s lot have got my vote’
the church in Kubus stands white against the quartzite sky
and echoes its voice among the ridges
‘o God blow and bloom your love for us’
says Uncle Adam
the congregation sing with their hands on their hearts
‘yes Jesus is a rock
in a thi-ir-sty land
a thi-ir-sty land
a thi-ir-sty land
you are like breath to me
Je-sus Je-ee-ee-sus’
Kubus hangs on the edge of Raisin Mountain
God it takes a lot to survive out here
Mrs Farmer of Eksteensfontein
‘I’m just very attached to cattle
a house isn’t for me
but the open country
I grew up like this in the open country
in a little round house
when we came here it was raining
and the marigolds were growing high
when I squatted I sat under a floor of flowers
so I made a place of my own
that I still love
for the earth
for the country’
(Translated by Richard Jürgens)
***
for my son
the earth hangs unfinished
and when the wind starts
the child stands in Kloof Street with his school bag
child of mine! I call to his back
there where my heart is tightest
as always I am elsewhere
I think him into almonds
and arms full of pulled up light
I trace his whispers in my matrix of blood
shyly the child shoots across the street
the wind takes his orthodontic drool
it is me
your mother
but his eyes are on the brink of leaving me
the earth lies unfinished
the wind splinters from him all that is child
and I tighten about him
past guilt past all neglect
I love him
way
way beyond heart
(Translated by the poet)
***
letter-poem lullaby for Ntombizana Atoo
1.
hush-hush
sleep-a-bye
sweet
sleep soft
sleep whole
sleep blackly tilted
childest child of mine
childling born wet born now
outside orbits the earth
so ah and you
so softly bloused in blue
let wind take your nostrils
let earth take eyes and ears and tongue
let fire let rain take your skin
inside crackles your tongue
your fists tiny roses clenched in plum
you you lay in a baylet
for the last time made holy by blood and yourself
shush now
shush now
childkin black childkin veld
childkin nobody
to nothing ever held
childkin breast childkin thirst
hush-hush
sleep-a-bye
sweet
sleep soft
sleep whole
sleep blackly tilted
2.
the wind is all over the sky
with my voice on its way to you
you who lies irrefutably stippled
somewhere in cloth and herb
in songlets and pain
your vertebrae curving against what’s to come
hold on dear child
against it all
that you could see the earth
clinging with suns and moons and comets and meteorites
the windfiltered sky
in tufts of fire tomatoes fly out among leaves
the moon reports in milk
in the thorn trees next to the road
the stars also hum their way to you
you have to see
you have to hear how the sun lures the wind over your threshold
taste how the water changes to still ivory plates in the setting sun
dear child the earth glows of heaven
3.
I will come and claim you from bones and bullets and violence and aids
from muteness from stupidity from the corrupt faces of men
I’ll gather you from millions of refugees
from hunger and thirst from the damp of cries and the stink of tolerated grief
the desperate mangle of dreams
from the back I’ll recognise the brave stalk of your neck
I will catch up with you
and pull you out by the arm
because you have to see differently
for us Africans - us the children of the abyss
we all have to balance differently
this continent drifting like a big black plundered heart on the globe
continent that is us
continent throbbing with blood in the vast ventricles of desert
and forest savannah and stone
forlorn continent
on which so many lost figures commit lost deeds of forlorn trust
big aggressive heart on which thousands die daily without sound
decaying in heaps
into raking brooms of bones
I want it to be you my smallest
that between your ribs
you have to feel the tremor that things have to be different
that something has to become true of what we are
that what we are as Africans is something so soft so humanly skinned
so profoundly constitutionally big and light and kind as soul
so caring as to surpass all understanding
motho ke motho ke batho babang
rather
we are what we are because we are of each other
why do we keep on then being so wrong?
I lay my cheek next to yours
I want to breathe into you
to care
to care
hush-hush
4.
I want to join your shoulderblades into tiny wings
to breast the roaming despair
lovely thing I am so close to you your cheek lies in peach down
your necklet wobbles this side that side
next to your mother who sleeps with her head turned towards you
do you hear me?
everything is so lucid tonight
your mouth has loosened a little from the breast
do you hear me?
I who am all-that-is-white
who am lightningwhite and indissolubly always only myself
I want you to make this continent yours
bask in your hands this morose mumbling heart
cradle it so that Africa at last splays out its clogged crooked valves
rig its full sails to the wind and navigate the earth in celebration
it has become yours
it has become mine
it is ours
dark outside
a chain rustles and I hear magazines slip off into the grass
I stop breathing and bend over you
my finger touching your fist
which slips open and holds me immediately
tightly
your mother stirs
loveliest thinniken thing I have just come to say hi!
and welcome
and that something of me will go with you
and that you needn’t know of it
5.
weep
weep for the past centuries and their defeated mutilated survivors
weep for the injustice and the closed perspective of greed
how does one become new?
how does one find a mechanism into the future
underneath all this dictatorial dust and portions of obese scum
the moment that humanity lifts her head
let us recognise it!
because the heart waits on her banner
my eyes screw loose
on the road to the millennium
may the coming epoch belong to Africa
revealed by an obstinate landscape of words
and a little girl with wild plaits and cheeky slender neck
making poems along the dusty road singing forward the way…
(Translated by the poet)
because of you
because of you
this country no longer lies
between us but within
it breathes becalmed
after being wounded
in its wondrous throat
in the cradle of my skull
it sings, it ignites
my tongue, my inner ear, the cavity of heart
shudders towards the outline
new in soft intimate clicks and gutturals
of my soul the retina learns to expand
daily because of a thousand stories
I was scorched
a new skin.
I am changed for ever. I want to say:
f o rgive me
f o rgive me
f o rgive me
You whom I have wronged, please
take me
with you.
(Translated by the poet)
***
Body Bereft
wednesday 18 june
over my terrified
body my hand moves again up to
my breast again hoping
that the lump of clay will not be there
that the hand misconstrued
that it has indeed vanished in the
meantime. the mountain stands
stripped clean and burnt through. I live by the
breath of the mountain alone.
I have no other competence. on
the windward side fringes of light sing, on
the lee side there is nought
from the waist you
blindly suppose yourself
secretly whole, you try to defuse
your body’s insurgence
against your body. let the stone lump
grow cold in the fog, let
the pine trees tilt like umbrellas in
a cortège, let my thoughts
steam to ripeness in sorrow. but I,
I am occupied this
morning: softly I coax my breasts to
unwind in foam, let them
freely drowse in tranquil fragrance, then
I rinse them in honey
to luminous shape and there where the
mammogram reveals its
blackest clot, I lather in light, I
caress with the sweetest
tonality of breath, of light-limbed
tintinnabulous bliss
there the light soaks in so blindingly
that the black membrane feels
itself blessed by blue, diluting its
viscous toxic polyps,
dissolving them to effluence. see
the rust bleed like biestings
from my nipples. Whole like a whiplash
I want to live on this earth.
(late night)
fuck-all. I feel fuck-all
for the life hereafter – it’s now that
I want to live, here that
I want to live. when I
look at you I grow sad, oh yes as
sad as the heart can see
sunday 22 june
my heart
whimpers on her hinges. I want to
touch something, hold something,
revive the wholeness that once was mine.
I want to return with
my previous body. I am not
I, without my body
only through my body can I in-
habit this earth. my soul
is my body entire. my body
embodies what I am.
do not turn against me, oh do not
ever leave me. do not
cave in around me, do not plummet
away from me, do not
die off on me, do not leave me with-
out testimony. I
have a body, therefore I am. step
into the breach for me –
yes, you are my only mandate to
engage the earth in love.
monday 23 june
the last rains of winter fall
faster than yearning or winter trees
with lymphatic systems
against the wintry light. it’s as if
I am young again in
my upper arms suddenly, and smooth
at the back of my head.
my body glows complete, my elbows
hang free with my senses
extended over my skin. I see
the mountain, maintaining
herself on her cliffs, containing her-
self in stone as stone, her-
self complete in herself. she decays
with the earth in the tongue
of eternity. I can do nought
but ascend in her with
roaring immaculate radiance
sunday 3 october
steadily the days curve
more brightly over me. the blossoms
are crushed by the wind. on
some inclines I shall never saunter
again. from the earliest
times you have been identified daily
and appropriated with
eyes and inhalations. only in
some imaginations
are you methodically flaked off.
my heart knows that you have
nothing to do with us, that you are
lost deep in the concept
of mountain, that the word mountain is
an abstract noun, that blue
is a verb, stone a friend, for next to
you I become she and
she he and we irrevocably
become us, because you
remain you. all in-
cantations of yearning
tilt in my chest. my pulse resounds with
poems and axillary
feathers, my blazing gizzard
buzzes with rhyme. I hone
my heart to yours. I shall never let
you leave me. words my mouth
will lose – my seams will be undone – I
speak many tongues but not
one of them any longer my own
(Translated by the poet)
for my son
the earth hangs unfinished
and when the wind starts
the child stands in Kloof Street with his school bag
child of mine! I call to his back
there where my heart is tightest
as always I am elsewhere
I think him into almonds
and arms full of pulled up light
I trace his whispers in my matrix of blood
shyly the child shoots across the street
the wind takes his orthodontic drool
it is me
your mother
but his eyes are on the brink of leaving me
the earth lies unfinished
the wind splinters from him all that is child
and I tighten about him
past guilt past all neglect
I love him
way
way beyond heart
(Translated by the poet)
my words of love
my words of love grow more tenuous than the sound of lilac
my language frayed
dazed and softened I feel myself through your stubborn struggle
you still hold me close like no-one else
you still choose my side like no-one else
against your chest I lie and I confess
you hunt my every gesture
you catch up with me everywhere
you pull me down between bush and grass
on the footpath you turn me around
so that I must look you in the eye
you kick me in the testicles
you shake me by the skin of my neck
you hold me, prick in the back, on the straight and narrow
(Translated by the poet)
the day surrenders to its sadness
the day surrenders to its sadness
over palm tree and roof the rain reigns mercilessly
the small white house with trellis and high verandah
stands like a warm cow her backside to the rain
eyes tightly shut
inside a woman moves from window to window
as beautiful as sunlight through vine leaves
as beautiful the drops on green
the rain on avocado bark
on the flintstone of leaves
the bougainvillaea sparkling wet, sly
keel green on apricots
the double hibiscus groans desperate and red in the dark
the intimacy inside is tangible
children sleeping damp in their room
the man in front of the heater
with art book cigarette and wine his eyes
glance up somewhat drenched in love
dusk snuffles softly against the gutters
a woman wanders from one steamed window to another
and sees the house constantly from an outside perspective
disabled and thanks to the light in every window
barely conscious of the total magnitude
a warm cow her backside to the rain
(Translated by the poet)
latin-american love song
neither the moist intimacy of your eyelids fair as fennel
nor the violence of your body withholding behind sheets
nor what comes to me as your life
will have so much slender mercy for me
as to see you sleeping
perhaps I see you sometimes
for the first time
you with your chest of guava and grape
your hands cool as spoons
your haughty griefs stain every corner blue
we will endure with each other
even if the sun culls the rooftops
even if the state cooks clichés
we will fill our hearts with colour
and the fireworks of finches
even if my eyes ride a rag to the horizon
even if the moon comes bareback
even if the mountain forms a conspiracy against the night
we will persist with each other
sometimes I see you for the first time
(Translated by the poet)
marital psalm
this marriage is my shepherd
I shall not want
in a swoon he loves me
and lusts after me with disconcerting fitness
man who makes me possible
(though I can fight him spectacularly)
(the way we make a double bed
shows an undivided indestructible pact)
sometimes he catches me by the hind leg
as one big piece of solid treachery
persecutes me
fucks me day and night
violates every millimetre of private space
smothers every glint in my eye which could lead to writing
“do our children successfully in respectable schools have to see
how their friends read about their mother’s splashing cunt
and their father’s perished cock
I mean my wife
jesus! somewhere a man’s got to draw the line”
I will fear no evil
the rod and the staff they comfort me
(Translated by the poet)
stripping
while you undress
I watch through my lashes
that bloody thick cock
prudish and self-righteous it hangs
head neatly wrinkled and clear cut
about its place between the balls – wincing in my direction
and I think of its years and years of conquest
night after fucking night through pregnancies
menstruation abortion pill-indifference
sorrow how many lectures given honours
received shopping done with semen dripping
on the everyday pad from all sides
that blade cuts
that cock goddamit does more than conquer
it determines how generous the mood
how matter-of-fact how daring the expenditure
standing upright it is bend or open-up
and you better be impressed my sister
not merely lushy or horny
but in bloody awe, yes!
everything every godfucking thing revolves around the maintenance of cock
and the thing has no heart no brain no soul
it’s dictatorial a fat-lipped autocrat
it besieges the reclusive clitoris
a mister’s Mister
somewhere you note numbers and statistics
that morning in Paris and again that night
your hands full of tit
I am waiting for the day
oh I look forward to the day the cock crumbles
that it doesn’t want to
that in a rosepoint pout it swings only hither and dither
that it doesn’t ever want to flare
but wiggle waggles unwillingly
boils over like a jam pot or fritters away like a balloon
and come it will come
because rumour has it
that for generations
the women in my family kapater their men with
yes with stares
oh jesus, and then we slither away like fertile snakes in the grass
taking shit from nobody
and they tell me
my aunts and my nieces and sisters they laugh and tell me
how one’s body starts chatting then how it dances into tune
at last coming home to its own juices
(Translated by the poet)
birth
at last this lovely little mammoth godawful in roses and blood
straining lovely between my legs tore loose
tumbled, no slipped out besmeared into my arms yelling birth
yelling pain yelling strength oh I throb throb throb about my
boychild my onlyest my loveliest my smallest my most superlative sound
wash him with colostrum
his arms next to his body wrap him in nappies
in a manger of songs shy murmurs from a twilight room
and feed him
feed him oh free feed him from my heart
(Translated by the poet)
how and with what?
I dig rennets from the sink sieve
oats and rinds burp into the drain outside the window
the nappy liners are being stunk out into the toilet
the dirty nappies sunlight soaped
bottoms washed powdered
the one cries with hunger
the other with anger
the eldest with his nervous vegetable knife voice
carves a whole superman flight through the noise
my man closes the door against us all
and turns up the Mozart piano concerto
and I go crazy
my voice yells a mixerpulpershreddermincer
my nose leaks like a fridge
my eyes quake like eggs in boiling water
my ears are post boxes pouting with calendars and junk mail
my children assault me with their rowdiness
selfishness
cheekiness
destructiveness
their fears complexes insecurities threats needs
beat my “image as mother” into soft steak on the wooden floor
I smell of vomit and shit and sweat
of semen and leeks
I illustrate a kitchen
with hair whipping dull against novilon skin
the milk coupons of my back bent uninterestedly inside the gown
the legs veined like blue soap
slippers like pot scourers
I sulk like a flour bag
I am chipped like a jug
my hands drier and older than yesterday’s toast
give half-hearted slaps against the clamour
I go outside and sit on the step this Sunday morning
neither sober nor embarrassed
wondering
how and with what does one survive this?
(Translated by the poet)
***
neither family nor friends says Lady Anne Barnard
tonight everything speaks through the dead
towards me
your brittle bundle of bones
my longest loved beloved
lies lonely and longingly cradled somewhere lost
and lean
I am overwhelmingly awake tonight
of me so little has become
you are all I had in this world
beloved deathling
alone and cold it is behind my ribs
Africa had me giving up all
it is so dark
it is so bleak
soft beloved taunter
of me so little has become
I am down
to my last skin
(Translated by Karen Press)
Where I Become You
When your skin screamed my bones caught fire.
Hugo Claus
1.
you come to win me over
at the other end of the world
I hear your call
shivering night blue and blindly
bound by radiant bones
with you my head bitingly cold
unwillingly hairgrown
scentgirded
you begin to unfasten the I from the self
the inviolable once
you let loose in many
separating-laying-side-by-side
loosening one piece from another
so that the bonds seem incessantly to unfold
in the unbearably co-writing
breath of unsundered roses
to dis-
mantle
the I
from the also-I
the you
from the almost-
you-in-me
listen, you say, how un-
fathomably it grieves,
the profoundness of love
2.
your vowels die passing me
so close that I
could have been the one
endless the static cargo of stars
that sputtering in the night shackles us
but you that I could have been
but was not yet, you shuffle
stubbornly you sift to bestowed profusion
each leaf that falls
falls alone, I counter
your face grinds to a halt
I want
the I that is I
to stay
but where
does it begin,
this being-I?
at the place
where the I is like you
or there where the I is other than you?
my tongue goes deaf
your eyes coo from the sockets of the lost ones
just a breathlick of light
pomegranate pip light
between where I-am is
and not-you is
I decay – grit in the throat
your vowels die passing
so close
that my eyelid welds itself to your love
3.
stars tongueblind and dying in gravitation
you come
heartstained and upwards
you come
your crystal breath
and the mouthclose sound of birds
stars tongueblind
stars dying
stars breathtakingly closest galactic sight
unwon I must become
unfastened
with wrists that can pile up stars
4.
overwhelmed by the whisper of our
capacity to grip
this kneadable earth’s mantle
can I not be not-you
you not be no-one
we not be nowhere
the unheard-of befitting word
not be unsaid by us
my heart falters – more weightless than before
yet bridgeable
there where I am other than you
I begin
it’s true
but there where I am you
have become you
I sing beyond myself
light pulses of quicksilversong
a thing cast beyond all humankind
5.
dismantled starfoam
stripped
swaggering starheaps of ruin
dust that thickens latent and formless
gravity’s force imposes her will
and gone at once
all sheltering
vulnerably reeling clots form their blades of light
stars vulnerable
stars pockmarked
how the spiral arms linger
around the new stately tilting tenderness
how chaotic the swirling
starspittle
starfoamfog
we could have been the ones together
if we could have recruited each other more bloodily
but now you come to recover me
at the other end of this giddy world
to be taken-apart-set-down
the nails in blood
the milk in bones
the phosphorus in the cortex
we, yes we consist of stardust
stars tongueblind
stars dying
so unimaginably we roar
so gigantically we carry our equilibrium
that, when we are cold
we glow as we burn
6.
to reach the point
beyond the uttering of the I
the point
of the I so multitudinous
that it no longer matters
to say I
that the I is no longer itself
but discernible
multiples
of the hopelessly lovable shadows
of your collarbone
7.
the winter wind
my littlest
my leftbehind
jasmine-draped skull
describes our shadow against the stone
against the wall we are
one
but your wound
keeps reflecting if I
look at you
separately
from inside the scent of your deepest arm
8.
you
the true you
the yes-you
the grass still rustles from your ankles just
now each time I look up
turning away
departing
beloved
astral birdsong wrapped in night
come!
let a word come right through you
let more come than I
more than the undermining mine
the perjuring mine
the endlessly l-ing mine
let us become
unglowing nakedly
unmoved
that which we never
could have become alone
9.
autumn the singularity from your sleep before dawn
all signals roam through your tongue
and we hold each other’s blood in trust
my lived one
my faithsong enraptured
your non-negotiable breath
makes of us separate ones
in the course of time
o my embodied love
lingering in gravity, all-powerful: us
(Translated by Karen Press)
***
colonialism of a special kind: 2
what becomes of those who choose to live on the earth lightly
here today there tomorrow
the only trace that they leave
the language of grass and trees
what becomes of them?
what becomes of those who choose to care for everyone
who always seek out the place of humanity in rich and poor
who cannot endure that people suffer
what becomes of them?
the earth belongs to the mighty
and the abundance thereof
the world and all who live in it
what becomes of them?
(Translated by Tony Ullyatt)
Closed Gate
Nonetheless let me break through
the hedge of your eyes just once
so that I can know
if it is for me
that you are growing white jasmine.
(Translated by Tony Ullyatt)
Haiku I
to possess your joy
is to be living in a
day which never breaks
(Translated by Tony Ullyatt)
Stay with Me
stay with me
when it rains
so that my sorrow can be small
stay with me
with the fold of your hands
so that the wind blows past my ears
stay with me
with your white owlet
so that I forget about my dying
stay with me
when the earth’s lower half cracks
and my small island sinks in the night.
(Translated by Tony Ullyatt)
I would
(for John)
I dearly want to make you happy
I would write verse for you
sober and supple as you are
I would sing for you
each night while you sleep
I would give myself to you
still as a fever tree
sweet and open like medlars
like mopanies in the autumn
like marulas in the summer
brown and whole like baobabs
fiery like the bleeding hands of a coral tree
I dearly want to give you something to carry
that will remain with you like a little warm lizard
one day when you sit, old and all alone, in the sun.
(Translated by Tony Ullyatt)
