Joan Hambidge – vertaal deur/translated by Jo Nel, Charl JF Cilliers & the author
- Joan Hambidge
Joan Hambidge is Professor of Afrikaans Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Her latest volume of poems is Visums by verstek (2011). She is a regular book reviewer and writes articles on literature and films. She conducts MA courses in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Joan has two doctorates. She has also published several satirical and non-satirical novels such as Die Judaskus, Palindroom and Kladboek. Die buigsaamheid van verdriet (2006) is a volume of selected poems. She is also known for her essays on literary theory. For her poetry she was awarded the Eugène Marais Prize and the Litera Prize. Another volume of poetry, Lot se vrou, will be published shortly.
Meditation
So hard to download all the rememberings.
The internet connection is unstable
and the files are too large for my inbox.
What is more, I’m struggling to delete them.
An answering machine warns of heavy traffic…
Oh how I abhor the use of words
such as files, delete and traffic!
Technical concepts that interrupt my poem,
like you for whom meditation means
emptying, cleaning out, a clear mind.
So hard to download all the memories.
How much less complicated was it not
before the internet. Now we are at the mercy
of the babblings of a hasty sms,
the siege of an e-mail, warfare on a blog and, dammit,
that one connection
that can end in instability, in peril.
The whole day I have been exploring
reasons for our temporisation.
And in a different light I meditate
on a connection in a poem downloading slowly
and causing a whole system to freeze.
(Tr.by Charl JF Cilliers)
Tokio, A Meditation
Does silence have a structure?, your late-night email
asked me here in the light of another time zone
while I struggled with wifi in a room of the Shiba Park hotel.
My reply kept getting stuck, skittish, floundering
like a fish that was about to lose its ki.
Just behind the hotel there was a funeral parlour,
a karaoke bar and a park for indolent walks.
This email’s like a smouldering fire, I reply.
I still cannot get an on-line connection.
Yesterday at the temple, washed my hands, left a coin.
Like me, the gods here are silent in all the conflicting languages.
In an unsent email there is a scorching soundlessness.
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
New York
Tonight I double-lock the door
and in my memory see your majestic skyline.
The city – like this traveller -
grows more guarded, but not more silent;
nothing can ever supersede
your imposing, tumbling Twin Towers:
in their very absence doubly absent.
In Chinatown the small call boxes still boast
their petite pagoda roofs and Harlem remains in darkness,
an expanse of hatred, malice and insurgency.
In Greenwich Village people give an account of how
it happened: in slow motion, as if in a dream,
first one and then another blast.
Armageddon. Descent into Hell. Doomsday.
You have seen other wars come and go,
have become a haven for soldiers fighting
in the old world; have drawn strangers to your bosom;
for guests from far and near you skyscraper ever higher.
You become the whole world in a city.
In 1927 you rejoiced when Charles Lindbergh
completed a breath-catching solo flight from here to Paris.
In 1929 you lived through Wall Street,
a state of total loss, a black depression.
So it is then: a city of high points, beacons, an Empire State,
a Statue of Liberty, while a deep subway keeps murmuring and toiling.
Much-celebrated city, with a heart called Central Park:
Once more I walk down 5th Avenue, see ships on the Hudson,
hear yellow cabs restlessly idling close to Greenwich Village.
So many poets have sought sanctuary in you.
One even foretold this last onslaught upon you:
“we must love one another or die…”
Is Deep Throat still showing on 42nd?
And does a deadbeat still call out: “Spare me a dime?”
I stand in Times Square and wonder who
on Broadway tonight will play out
the American Dream in cryptic shards of sound?
A Brooklyn Bridge across which survivors, coated in dust, keep fleeing?
A David Mamet with hot-blooded dagger thrusts?
An exuberant restaging of Hair or Oh, Calcutta!
would strike a false note, be out of place…
City of many names: forest of stone,
the Big Apple
the city that never sleeps,
“the city so nice they named it twice”…
Make me your Fiorello la Guardia,
an honorary citizen, an ambassador,
for you who remain standing,
in spite of adversity.
(From: Visums by Verstek, H & R, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Kervansaray
A small matchbox
kervansaray international holiday courts
packed with memories and impressions.
In so many cities a collected memento:
from Havana, soap, its fragrance lost, a fold-up toothbrush
from Acapulco’s Zen Hotel, a tube of toothpaste from Kyoto.
I play at Alice In Wonderland: grow larger and smaller
in front of all the travel doors of memory.
There was a time when I drowned in my tears: a tolling bell
of parting, rejection, the end of a relationship,
impelled the journey. The ginger cat’s smile lingers.
One late summer afternoon I drove into Edinburgh,
amazed at the pink tinge of a city
ablaze with the colours of sunset.
Now it is an inward journey in the knowledge that all
my impressions are imaged in such a small matchbox.
(From: Visums by Verstek, H & R, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
London
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. – Samuel Johnson
Lowonidonjon,
or rather, river too wide to be
controlled. In 1666 a fire devoured
your heart. You survived, were rebuilt,
endured plagues, wars, invasions, deaths.
Yet you have never gripped my imagination. I am
merely tarrying here, viewing your landmarks such as the Thames,
Westminster, Buckingham Palace, too many to recount.
You are, have always been, merely a gateway to other cities,
en route to Dublin, Glasgow, Vienna. A meal ticket.
Forgive me! This is, in the first place (and the last),
about me, not you. I do not find myself in Mexico
longing for Granada; nor singing the praises of Petticoat Lane
in a cold city with a Tube that stretches far and wide.
(and hidden from sight, evils walk round at night, like Jack the Ripper.)
I hate your Cockney sounds, your double-decker buses,
your detachment, your ruefulness, your haughtiness.
An Englishman in New York, my foot!
But wait. There is indeed something that lifts you above
others (apart from strange sounds and colours):
Madam Tussauds.
Imitation, cloning, likenesses.
Here I stand, a visitor to the house of spent passion,
love that has flown; The Tales of Hoffman is playing,
but there is no more life.
Here you take me back to the bluebeard room,
to all the wax images of my lost, heart-rending relationships.
Fortunately my head – like that of the Madam – is not being chopped
off. Your detachment thus commemorated.
(From: Visums by Verstek, H & R, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Santiago de Chile
O beloved, tormented city:
I know of your distress,
your Costanero Norte cut off,
Santiaguinos trapped in
your dark underground and Estacion.
In my mind I walk across
the Alameda and wonder if Sanhattan
is still standing. Is the snow on the Andes melting?
Is the Cordillera de la Costa
aware of your setback? Is the Mapoche flourishing?
Is the Tupungato volcano
dormantly spluttering?
O beloved, tormented city:
La Chascona, that monument,
is hopefully unscathed?
“Beyond the country’s walls,
beside the snow’s crystal lattice,
behind the river’s green leafiness,
under the nitrate and thorns
I came upon drops of blood,
and every drop burned
like fire.” The words of the poet
of La Chascona remain
alive in me all the way to Machu Picchu
and the morning glow of the Urubamba’s
spluttering soleful sounds of longing.
(From: Visums by Verstek, H & R, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Bangkok
Krung Thep Mahanakhon
City of Angels,
Big City ,
Eternal City of Jewels,
Impenetrable City,
how does one evoke you in my language,
not in Pali or Sanskrit?
In your words you are called
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya
Witsanukam Prasit
apparently the longest name on earth,
according to The Lonely Planet.
My poetry needs something more passionate, more urgent:
For me you are the Venice of the East
with your rivers and canals properly protected
against inundations and floods and other calamities.
Who watches over you?
In my imagination I see
children sailing over klongs
during jubilant festivities,
and on Queen Sirikit’s birthday,
so it is said, there are cheerful decorations and lights
in her honour. Angelic, bounteous, I am told,
as the leave granted, during a Brahmin festive season,
for frenzied rice-picking,
and for perhaps gaining some fleeting
understanding of you?
Without ceremony
or long-windedness,
your excess articulated in your name.
I do not understand you:
could never get you trimmed
down: even though I was there.
(From: Visums by Verstek, H & R, 2011)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Translator:
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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.
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My sweet old etcetera
It’s through Latin
Etruscan becomes comprehensible -
and even Egyptian hieroglyphics
are effortlessly deciphered
by experts; now explicable.
But who will someday grasp
the alphabet of our ruins?
Mysteriously you construct
a plastic model ship
of the Titanic – while I drift
on the Dead Sea
anticipating deliverance.
Archaelogical research
cannot simplify
the destruction
which you multiply.
(Tr. by Jo Nel)
One night-stand
The scène is always the same:
intro-drink-seduction-bed.
The next day constantly a mind fuck:
guilt-silence-longing
and regret.
To fall in love is like placing a bet.
(Tr. by the author)
Writing as fucking
To write a sapphic verse
close before midnight
leads to many problems
(ignoring “vicious mathematics” …)
to find a non-off-beat image
for our for(ever)ness:
the pen is mightier than the sword:
does not work; too phallic, sexist,
sounds like penis-envy…
when two lips speak together:
does not reveal much of our softness/tenderness;
rubyfruit jungle:
is false, fruit-
less romanticism;
dark labyrinth:
too desperately literary;
bitter lemons:
cute poetic cunninglingus.
To write a (love)poem
like this, creates
coldness/logic/guilt
about that which merely is.
(Tr. by the author)
Domanda
For Margaret Rosabel Mezzabotta
Untimely, premature your exit
to an unknown region.
The soul, I remember this morning,
needs the slow maturation of wine.
If hastily uncorked or poured
wine suffers bottle shock.
You would have been able to verify
this for me: an obscure reference
to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
But to comprehend your death
is an undecodable hieroglyphic
in a dark impassable alleyway.
Death reverses the order of words,
it makes us look back, remember, even
seize small moments of chance -
like my cleaning your glasses once,
discussing dark symbols with you.
For this funeral oration, or rather declamation –
as a poet I am completely unprepared,
no, undeclared, undeserving…
The so-called consolatio or comfort
of a medium (Look, she sends you a rose)
or the flickering of a candle,
undoes nothing. What does “passing away”
mean? That you had to leave – in my book
anyway – far too rapidly
for heaven? That your soul was forced out
seemingly without warning. That roses fade,
candles cease to flicker…
Still I wanted to ask:
“Who scratched out Nefertiti’s one eye
so that she was blinded on the other side?”
(Tr. by the author)
My parents
i
From my birdlike mother,
I inherited my unhappy, dissatisfied, unpleasing nature:
Yesterday, was a better day.
From my forceful, burly father,
my dreamy, romantic, undaunted disposition.
The one can place words like blocks;
the other’s dreamy nature almost blocked
by others…
And me?
Their heirloom?
The one part of the Janus head
looks back to what was;
the other half to what words
may unblock.
ii
Oh it was always so effortless, so easy
to turn away from you my parents,
the eternal addressees
of this poem and my prayers.
This is an elegy
before you leave for the other side
and because a funereal poem might be inappropriate
at this time of deadly silence.
For her my crooked old mother
for him my burly father
something which is shorter than a letter
worthier than a legacy
more lasting than a gravestone
more reliable than an insurance policy
more worthy than a family ring.
Every poem which stems
from me with affection
due to them.
Her voice the metre of my verses
his hand the form of my words.
iii
They are the salt of the earth
yes, the salt of the earth
because their tears
their tears
stream like salt
like salt
over their cheeks
They are the salt of the earth
my parents
lamenting in silence
over their children’s tears
streaming like salt
like salt
over their cheeks
iv
Mother:
tonight I recall a letter to you
written in my niggling handwriting
from a faraway country:
It is winter in New Haven
at night I hear the silence
of the snow falling
like the wings of departing swallows
O Mother
I carry the heavy burden
of feeling the descending words
the feathers of a departing swallow
O Mother
O Mother
I carry the heavy burden
of words descending on me
like black swallows.
v
Tonight I suddenly recall
how you called
out: “Everything is against me!”
and about three decades later
I realise
Dad
how you struggled
to fit us all in
on your 30 Day Old Mutual
calendar.
Another policy
another late shift
an extra work load.
And I?
I keep myself busy with a policy
with almost no investment value.
It fails to fit on a normal calender,
it prefers the unpredictable hour
and yes, it does not protect you
against disillusion
or similar feelings
as a published poem betraying the poet.
vi
When I was younger
and oh so unsure
they were merely in the way
but now I return
incessantly to them
my parents so sure
and understanding,
prepared to stand surety
Does a pun lurks there
in being “sure” and “stand surety”
if merely in a poem?
vii
Dad
I carry you
a graft on my body.
I dreamt of you last night:
you are playing in an orchestra
with your old cronies
at a small, village wedding
with many dirty, stacked plates.
You hand me a glass of wine…
How real, tangible
the dream feels which according to Cirlot
might indicate an approaching death.
Yes, my father presents me with a glass
from which I pour life
with full abundance.
viii
My mother prefers
Not to be mentioned in my verses.
Yet my first searching, rambling poem
written in a faraway USA
in cold winter snow, was addressed to her.
Previously I spoke to her through
other woman poets in my letters.
Poetry learnt by heart
now written from the heart.
My mother prefers
not to be mentioned in my verses.
Yet all words stem
from the restrained, confined mother womb.
Oh mother forgive me this tres-
pass, this intrusion
of your privacy,
due to the unsevered umbilical cord.
ix
Look at them, my parents,
sitting as a young engaged couple
on a sofa in a Jewish studio.
You smile with a little hat on your head
holding Dad’s hand.
Many decades later I realise:
we choose undoubtedly our parents
prenatal and astral.
Here they are, my parents,
waiting
the two old wrecks
in a poem by their second eldest.
I see them after being 50 years together:
on that day I phone them up
from a faraway place.
I place them neatly
- as if for a photo shoot -
for a final analysis,
for an unharmed version,
in a thankful cadeau.
A coup de chapeau!
(Tr. by the author)
Rome
Although I lost my religion long before my virginity
yes it was traumatic to copy others
in this process me I copycat could I understand in Rome
the first original shall we say, most original city
of the arts understand why artists create
represent passion in a painting hanging upside
down from roofs everything for art’s sake
I must confess: I even cried
when I saw Michelangelo’s Pieta
as it becomes more than a mother
not comprehending the death
of her beloved firstborn look at the fingers
they are stretched out searching
the son’s cold broken knee
the head backwards the loin cloth unravel-
ling how long will it take before the body de-
composes? the muscles breaking down
Even the holes in hand and foot
recalled in breathtaking detail
(Remember: He was pierced)
For me death here becomes colder than marble
(Tr. by the author)
