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Joan Hambidge – vertaling in Engels

Monday, April 30th, 2012

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 5^th 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 42^nd?

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:

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.

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

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.

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

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

I carry the heavy burden

of words descending on me

like black swallows.

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.

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.

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)

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Antjie Krog - vertaling in Engels

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

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. )

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

© 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

© 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. )

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

© 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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)

***

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

***

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

***

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’

***

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

***

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)

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)

(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

(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.

***

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

***

Where I Become You

When your skin screamed my bones caught fire.
Hugo Claus

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hush-hush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Antjie Krog, Denis Hirson, Karen Press, Richard Jürgens, Tony Ullyatt

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Breyten Breytenbach – vertaling in Engels

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

Breyten Breytenbach - vertaal deur/translated by the author

Breyten Breytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach is a distinguished poet, painter, novelist, playwriter, essayist and human rights activist. He is considered one of the greatest living poets in Afrikaans. His literary work has been translated into many languages and he has been honoured with numerous literary and art awards. Having exhibited worldwide he is also a recognized painter, portraying surreal human and animal imagery. He was born on 16 September 1939 in Bonnievale and studied art at the Michaelis Art School in Cape Town. In 1960 he left South Africa and went to Paris where he married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien (Yellow Lotus), a French woman of Vietnamese origin. But he could not return to South Africa because of the Mixed Marriages Act, which classified Yolande as Coloured. A committed opponent of apartheid in South Africa, Breytenbach established the resistance group Okela, and from 1975-1982 he was a political prisoner in South African prisons serving two terms of solitary confinement. Both his paintings and his literary work include the notions of nomadism, values of the outsider, incarceration, death and decay, pain, movement, social criticism, memory, identity and consciousness. Breytenbach made his debut with a collection of innovative poems in 1964 with the publication of Die ysterkoei moet sweet. In his latest collection of poetry he engaged in a nomadic conversation with his friend, the late Palestine poet, Mahmoud Darwish. He received the Protea Prize, Mahmoud Darwish Prize and for the French translation of Oorblyfsels/ Voice over, the Max Jacob Prize. His latest volume of poetry, Die beginsel van stof, appeared with Human & Rousseau in 2011.

the opening poem

(”in the beginning there is love”)

to her with the tiny feet like tamed pigeons

to her whose warm breath will be strung from your mouth

as the bunting of a pleasure cruiser

to her with the mother-spot a morning star

burning next to the scar under the breast

to her for whom the crest is a barely discernible sigh

to her with the black buttocks but purple flames

in the small of the back

to her who is the consort of a king enjoying you from up high

to her who is fresh snow between the sheets

to her with the slanted eyes and the bashful nether mouth

to her who laughs at your puny haft

to her who spits in your face in a foreign tongue

to her with the long grey memory and the wrinkles

the dim sight and the initiate’s know-how

to her who chases you away like a dog

to her who gurgles when stiffening in a jerk

like a body hanged from the rope of pleasure and pain

to her who takes all the Holy Names in vain

to her with the frog between the legs

to her with the pudendum like a green guitar

swollen and smooth

never yet plucked by a singing finger

to her who thought you had wings

to her with the pitch dark mouth and the powdered tits

to her who takes you for a dead lover

to her with the erotic hands

to her who killed herself

to her who murdered you

to her whose belly is a banked fire

to her who quite still turns her head away

so that you might not taste the tears

to her with the dorsal vertebrae like a ladder of notes

praying through the fingers

to her who relishes humble pie

to her who whispers unbelievable unlawfulnesses

in your ear at first

only to spout a sudden inkwell

to her with the brown body like a master violin

to her who talks to darkness

to her who like a snake

will let all of you slither down a smooth throat

to her who has forgotten you

to her who has never heard of you

to her for whom you write dedications like nuptial dances

to her, for all of her

this poem

(From: Lady one:Of love and Other Poems, Harcourt, 2002)

(Tr. by the author)

the way back

then Wordfool told the woman and the child

come let us squat on our haunches

here against the climb

and look down on the smoking city

to take stock-

we remain tied to the road

as the place of origin

even though we’ve forgotten the people’s names

then Wordfool told the woman and the child

we are free

I know it is hard

and once every year it is good

to turn around

and look back

on the journeys and the state of the dead

once every year

the season goes dark

and the time is right

and ripe to bring the pumpkin

a celestial fruit of eternal life

to market

come let us sing

how shall we preserve the flesh?

in crypts mummies nod their heads

heavy with the travels of decay

moths and blight darken their coats with holes

how shall we exorcise distance?

we stuff the trips and the tides

with desert honey and locust meat

and forgotten remembrances of the Old Country-

that a good fragrance may come from the hills

and keep book in the dust

then Wordfool told the woman and the child

let’s imagine ourselves as scouts

gather wood and light the fire

to signal to the dwellers

of the dead city

that we wish to entice the moon

from her dark hollows

to reconcile with the pumpkin

moreover Wordfool told the woman and the child

forgive me please

one makes poems also from sticks and seeds

to capture the soft words

one is always looking for measure and rhyme

and then the combustion of incarnation

you mustn’t tell anybody

(From: Windcatcher: New & Selected Poems, 1964-2006, Harcourt, 2007)

(Tr. by the author)

for Michael Fried: Paris, December 21, 2004

we live in dark times

birds of heaven are poisoned

we roam through brightly lit halls

stare myopically at exhibitions

of grey imaginaries, encyclopaedias of passing

meticulously annotated absences of sense

the emptier the contents the more painfully

perfection and the perfidy of looking will flow

as the world completes itself through us

and we see corpse camps, genocide, man

abjuring his skein of belonging

in a desperate wing-beat to be

free of death

the birds of heaven are poisoned

and we live in dark times

and somewhere on fetid waters of holy rivers

burning effigies of dark-faced goddesses bob

they’ve long since stopped singing to us

in closet spaces we stare myopically

at the skinned life of the writer

naked like a soft dragon on the floor

to kiss a black tongue to the shoe

of his cruel beloved

the spine a curve of cursed words

and we see death camps, genocide, troughs

stuffed with corpses, man

jeering at his rope of legitimacy

in a thrashing wing-thrust

to be free of passing

has long since stopped singing to us

“finally, when I shave my sombre morning face

I have the impression of shaving

my cadaver before it is put on its bier

and let to water

in the putrid river of oblivion”

from the void comes incarnation

comes dark wind

will the wind be a wound

and signal the blind child

in twilit cellar chambers

we eat salad and lard and bread

suddenly recall the stories of illicit ancestors

how clumsily our mouths fold around deceased tongues

to elicit murmurs of forgetting

man relinquishes the illumination

of ever again being mad and clear

and out there the clear city rises

magnificent ruin of man’s monstrous imagination

where much love was committed

and murders often done by knife

while the writer sang

of incandescent rivers where goddesses bathe

the water dragon naked and blind

to the left a high moon slips

as petrified subconsciousness

chafed pale by dust of space and time

tomorrow paper snow will litter and letter

the roof-map and the nest of streets

and from gutters icy drops will drip

on dark faces of shivering wanderers

(From: Windcatcher: New & Selected Poems, 1964-2006, Harcourt, 2007)

(Tr. by the author)

midmorning in heaven

midmorning in heaven above West Hill

with moon a perforated dipper

of light dredged from time

bone-bleached by gospel tides

of verbs become verbiage

to stool in stone the size of a dream

which only goes to show

that since the outset of stellar configurations

there’s been a door to life in the dark out there

oh watchmen, you lying low in the lee of your blindness

to leer at the light in our salt

and the shimmering of rose roosting our wounds:

if you were to gaze on the gazetted faces of the dead

you’d remember gossamer mothers in gas chambers

and know: this is not the way

to recover your identity

you standing in the doorways of our demure dwellings:

come inside from the blind binding out there

come darken our thresholds

come rest your whitened eyes

so that we may know ourselves

as people just like you

come, come drink Arabic coffee with us

and you will see us weep

and fit into coffins just like you do

(From: Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish, Archipelago Books, 2009)

(Tr. by the author)

measures

you can’t let a drunken man hold a pen

he will try to tack and sail against history

you can’t let a drunken man leave the house

before dawn

when streetlights are still green

he will go to the quay to bellow at the wind

you can’t ask a drunken man to think straight

he will tell you all about rodents in Siberia

you can’t let a drunken man walk through town

where women have long and sly eyes

he will stumble over his words and his feet

and go piss behind the laurel bush in the park

with a shiver down his spine

truly, you can’t ask a drunken man what about a poem

he will pull faces by the window at passers-by

and pretend he’s looking to rhyme with fold

you can’t believe a drunken man

when he says he has flown

even if he’s covered in bumps and bruises

and though a dirty pair of underpants

be slapping from the flagpole on city hall

you cannot ask a drunken man after the whereabouts of God

he will intimate that his underpants have been stolen

you can’t allow a drunken man to work on the roof

he will tell you he knows the ins and outs of the sound of singing

while in his naked skin listening to the greediest secrets

whispered in chimney flues

you can’t question him at all about love

for as drunken suitor he will stumble

when he offers you his heart as bag of rotten tomatoes

while his mouth is still red

you can’t expect a drunken man

to snitch on dead friends

he has a knife with a white blade in the pocket

you can’t inquire of a drunken man

if he ever thinks of death

he splutters too much when he curses and laughs

verily, I say to you

you can’t have a drunken man

cry on paper

it becomes a shitting of flies

with tears and snot

and old wine stains

here

(Uncollected)

(Tr. by the author)

***

Other:

Breyten Breytenbach – translated by Tony Ullyatt

26 November 1975

May trees remain ever green
and all the stars white,
and may there always be people
who without shyness can look
each other in the eye –
because life is only one breath long
and all the stars of the Nether Regions dark –

I shall die and go to my father

I shall die and go to my father
in Wellington with long legs
shining in the light
where the rooms are dark and heavy
where stars sit on the roof’s ridge
and angels dig for worms in the garden
I shall die and with little baggage
hit the road
over the Wellington mountains
between the trees and the dusk
and go to my father;

The sun will beat on the earth
the wind’s waves cause the joints to creak
we hear the tenants’
abrasive shuffle above our head
we will play draughts on the back stoop
– old father cheating –
and over the radio
listen to the night’s news.

Friends, dying’s cohorts,
do not hesitate; now life hangs
still like flesh on our bodies
but death does not disappoint
we come and we go
are like water out the tap so
like sounds from the mouth
as we come and we go
our bones will know freedom –
Come with me
in my death in me go to my father
to Wellington where the angels
angle with worms for stars from heaven
let us die and perish and be cheerful:
my father has a huge boarding house.

[Untitled]

and the poem is the meaning
of the poem

(Tr. by Tony Ullyatt)

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Breyten Breytenbach, Tony Ullyatt

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Wilhelm Knobel – vertaling in Engels

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Wilhelm Knobel – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

carry it carefully over the stony road

carry it carefully over the stony road

he’ll shift in the coffin just now

and try to sit upright with his crushed-in chest

it must be stifling to lie so still

without being able to breathe

and all that earth above you perhaps

only when it’s night

can he leave his quiet resting-place

and amble over the land

and allow his eye to go over the cattle

but before daybreak begins to glow over the yard

and the first sparrows begin chirping in the orchard

he must return

and assume the prescribed position

stately

stretched out

with his hands crossed over his chest

and only a grass seed on his pajama leg

as witness to his nocturnal wandering

Wilhelm Knobel (26.10.1935-06.01.1974)

Six translations for the 36th anniversary of his death

Interior

a small swallow flies around the room

the woman in the black frock sits at the machine and works

now that he is dead the house is still

the flowers on the grave have long since wilted

day by day visitors become fewer

the small swallow flies round the room desperately

the woman in the black frock feeds material feverishly to the needle

just now she can drink a pill with her tea

but the day is so long

in the quiet house

the cherry tree in front of the window is almost stripped bare

by weaver birds:

one day soon it will be autumn

the telephone rings and rings

the woman in the black frock weeps

you didn’t have a great deal when you began

you didn’t have a great deal when you began

a dog a lovely girl and a horse

and then you got everything

through years of hard work too, yes,

but above all inspiration and promise

the lovely girl became a woman

and children filled your house

neither of you always understood each other

but insight really comes with the years

and then, on the day of your death, you were alone

more than in the beginning

or did there perhaps for one merciful moment

flash through your brain the comforting image of

your horse and your girl and your dog

I wear a suit a waistcoat and a tie of yours

I wear a suit a waistcoat and a tie of yours

If anyone complements me on the choice of the

dark green and ochre tie

then I think contentedly

we had good taste

my father and I

because didn’t I give it to him on his last birthday

and didn’t he wear it

And when I see the slightly darker spots on the pockets

of the suit

then it does me good to know:

sometimes you also put a sweet in your pocket . . .

for later

and then forgot it

until it threaded stickily through the cloth

But mornings

as I put on the beige waistcoat

and feel its warmth through the day

I wonder

how cold you are now

or does warmth still stream out

from the idea of the fabric tight against my body

Archilochos of Paros is sick

Archilochus of Paros is sick

of living on figs and fish

and then there’s his engagement with Neoboule:

her father has long known he’s a bastard

but still without warning he

sent him on his way one day,

(there was much talk of a richer lover

but no one bothers much about rumours)

would he storm into the house with his sword

and cleave the old man’s flabby belly open

or exit suddenly for some Far Eastern lands

to forget his heart’s passion with exotic women?

you don’t have that much energy

if you have to live on figs and fish

so only satire remains:

the beautiful Neoboule with her slender body

became, in his poems, a faded courtesan

whose charms bewitched no man any longer

and then as if this didn’t satisfy his piqued reputation

he turned her into a fat prostitute

who used cheap perfume too lavishly

Now her honour is avenged

- Neoboule and her father killed themselves

to escape his scathing pen –

life on Paros is even duller now

mornings he wakes with Neoboule’s name on his lips

and evenings the seagulls on the beach call, tormenting him

Neoboule! Neoboule!

in recognition of an old friend

for Doctor Con

there was a time you said

as I sat with a glass of jeripigo in my hand

on an autumn night in Stellenbosch

it isn’t the great agonies that gnaw at a person’s life

but every day’s small frustrations

have you forgotten the small joys?

the languid sparkle of rust-brown jeripigo

the music of Vivaldi in the Boland autumn

time and again

as a new love is smothered

or a deceitful friendship stuns the heart

the familiar music brushes the curtain softly

the fragrance of decaying leaves hangs in the room

and the taste of the wine revives the tongue

distilling the pain

[Nagelate Gedigte (1975). Johannesburg: Perskor-Uitgewery, p. 79]

we thank you for your application

we thank you for your application to be our representative

in Postmasburg

but we doubt whether in that god-forsaken dorp

we want to be represented again

our last representative’s oranges often shrivelled on the rack

and if one or other old maid got it into her head to make marmalade

and she hammered him about not being able to satisfy her needs

should it be us who are in for it and who must pay the doctor’s bills

if we may offer you some advice, keep some frozen concentrated

orange juice in cans

now the old maids must learn once and for all

a glass of pure diluted orange juice in the morning is almost as delicious

and healthier

and if you experience problems with sales early on

you can tell people about the health benefits of citrus

and how important Vitamin C is for the daily diet

and on big occasions

- like the opening of the new school hall or when the mayor’s wife has a baby -

serve citrus instead of wine with the cheese

it’s cheaper

and its refreshing taste exactly the right thing

for the blazing heat of Postmasburg

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Tony Ullyat, Wilhelm Knobel

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Boerneef – vertaling in Engels

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Boerneef – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Six Songs for Yesteryear

The young green of an oak tree:

that is spring for me

add in a malachite sunbird

only then it is really spring

the profusion of the double green

is doubly glorious to the eye

it helps later for the sun’s burning

this green gladness for the eye

The rain pours at Koorsteenberg

the fig orchards and the karee trees drink

the rain greys at Koorsteenberg

the rain sieves down at Koorsteenberg

this year woolly sheep will plump up once more

and the buck wagon creak under the heavy load of wool

Listen to the partridges and the pheasants

singing partridgeandpheasant hosannas

first it was dry and the world grey

and dismal for pheasants and partridges

now it has rained

the veld is wet

the pheasants hoppityskip along my dear

all the partridges and pheasants

sing partridgeandpheasant hosannas now

My heart blossoms white

for the chestnut-haired girl

I pick heather of the reddest red

for this chestnut-haired girl

Bellabint my young girl

it is heart-blossom white

it is heather red

for you my chestnut-haired girl

Nothing hangs as red as vineyard leaves

at Hex River

nothing stands so yellow as the autumn poplars

along the Dwars River at Ceres

stand stock still hold your breath

and look long and reverently

as a person should look at such an autumn

let it burn in you for some later time

the warm yellow and red for times gone by

You are all alone

you live alone

and play your squeezebox on a Saturday night

some notes here

some notes there

a bit of pleasure on a moonlit night

no one knows a potion for loneliness later

you become quieter, quieter still

and later dead still

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Boerneef, Tony Ullyatt

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Wilma Stockenström – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Wilma Stockenström – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Wilma Stockenström has published six volumes of poetry, six novels, and a play. In 2008 a selection of her poems was published. After graduating from Stellenbosch University, she worked as a radio announcer in Pretoria. She made her début as an actress in Een bruid in de morgen (A bride in the morning) by Hugo Claus and appeared in several productions of South African television. In 1970 she published her first volume of poetry, Vir die bysiende leser (For the near-sighted reader). In 1977 she was awarded the prestigious Hertzog prize for her poetry; in 1992 she received the same prize for her prose. Her impressive novel Die kremetartekspedisie (Expedition to the Boabab) appeared in Dutch, German, French, Swedish, Italian and Hebrew translation.

I gift you my walled-in days

I gift you my walled-in days
because they are all I possess.
For you my days, the retrenched ones.
You will build up some system from them.
You will bestow meaning on what stands
stubby like hewn trees. I
offer you my doleful wizenedness.

Of all my bright yellow days

Of all my bright yellow days
I would write this one down;
that later I could know how swarms
of doves flutter from roofs
and that, if I wanted, I
could read of a bright yellow
day and of you here beside me.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Tony Ullyatt, Wilma Stockenström

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Rosa Keet – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Rosa Keet – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

a private thing

and if I had to die now
bury me on a sand dune
between bushes with a view of the sea
a litre coke a carton of cigarettes
and a book or two
I am not very flashy
but an eiderdown and a blow-up mattress
would also be welcome

and differently from the mass graves at ur or dachau
(where they cram the place full)
I think a grave is a private thing
and besides I am too egocentric
for an epitaph such as:
here lies pete and john and the world and his wife etcetera etcetera
besides when I feel lonely I can

always go and haunt someone as a guest.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Rosa Keet, Tony Ullyatt

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Phil du Plessis – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Phil du Plessis – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

To the printer

My verse
holds me fast
and offers no words
to break out
from there

Trapped,
I strip
my senses, but
remain impure

from incessant
rhyming
with death

III

please attenuate
my sorrow

with white.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Phil du Plessis, Tony Ullyatt

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Jeanne Goosen – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Jeanne Goosen – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

the morning comes with its tatters

the morning comes with its tatters
and its puzzles
there is nothing I am sure about
the lorry has stopped for the waste stuff
they congregate there, on the pavement
my shiny bags full of revulsion
paper and words
they are heaved shoulder high and carted away
there is nothing I want to save
the day glares; it will not rain
no, it will not rain today
the blind bird turns back to its shadow
he is still
despair has become more ferocious than the love song

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Jeanne Goosen, Tony Ullyatt

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George Weideman – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

George Weideman – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

It’s as if the flowers

It’s as if the flowers are crippled this year,
with unclear eyes; the plains dull and ashen-grey –
you must come in good time so that we can search
deep gullies for wild flax and wild roses.

It’s as if the sunbird and the rain bird are silent
as stones in the desert, and stones do not grow either –
you must come, as long as my heart is still warm
and my tears can still heal.

It’s as if the days fly by like migrant birds
after a summer that we no longer know –
you must come, because you can give me wings
so that we can flee together.

It’s as if night is getting darker, sweetheart
and the stars dwindle; the moon is aloof –
you must come as long as there is light, and time
– the almond tree is white with snow.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, George Weideman, Tony Ullyatt

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E. W. S. Hammond – vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

E. W. S. Hammond – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Spring in England

The sun has come back again
with the colour
of wild daffodils.

And swallows
in their tremulous flight from
my haemorrhaging South Africa.

Autumn

It’s the sun that is grieving.
It’s the trees that weep.

I just sit here.

Would anyone mind
if I became a tree?

To ground

Before this death
I stand with
a mouth full of teeth,
hands hanging slack
with nothing more
to break off
or to hold up.

Alone
as a fresh
grave in the rain.

Acceptance

My name is not
Job; although
I sit here
in sackcloth and ash
and look at
a world that
had once been mine

My name is not
Samuel either;
Who calls so:

Eli, Eli, lamma sabbachtani?

Self-portrait

That’s really not my face
I am staring at.
That’s not me
looking like that:
these fleshy cheeks
fat gut
drooping hands
old man’s titties.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, E. W. S. Hammond, Tony Ullyatt

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Ina Rousseau - vertaling in Engels

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Ina Rousseau - vertaal deur die outeur

[ http://versindaba.co.za/2009/07/13/ina-rousseau-in-engels/ (Daniel Hugo) ]

Die laspos

Uit die niet

kom staan voor my ’n kropduif

wat probeer om my blik van my boek

te lok. En sodra ek wonder

wat in liefdesnaam hy by my soek,

begin hy iets by my te bedel

wat ek sweerlik self ontbeer:

Hy vra vir my kroepoek.

En as ek vir hom sê skoert,

herhaal hy maar weer kroepoek.

So: kroepoek kroepoek kroepoek.

Pleitend eers, maar spoedig

bot, asof hy op my vloek.

Krupuk

I went to De Waal Park to read.

A pigeon appeared from nowhere,

making silly noises at my feet,

apparantly to make me look

at him, in stead of at my book.

And just as I was wondering

what the dickens he was up to,

he started to beg something from me

which – cross my heart – I did not have:

He asked me for krupuk.

And when I ordered him to scoot,

he simply continued asking krupuk.

Like this: krupuk krupuk krupuk.

Plaintive at first, he soon became

distinctly curt, as though the word

was being uttered as a curse.

Or worse.

(1/11/04)

(Vertaling: Ina Rousseau)

Uit: ’n Onbekende jaartal (1995)

The healers (“Die helers”)

Also on this morning in early summer

the onslaught is being perpetuated:

the fabric of our country

is being torn, the seams

unpicked with little hooks of stainless steel –

but outside in the garden,

in a herbaceous border, fragrant

with the exudations of jasmine and heliotrope,

birds is busy

knotting a long strip of Flemish lace

out of sound.

Tiff (“Twis”)

One morning I had a tiff with Sis Genis.

We were both six.

“It is!” I shouted, and she: “It isn’t!”

What was this tiff about between me and Sis

before we knew the word tiff exists?

“Tis.” “Tisn’t.” “Tis.” “Tisn’t.”

Then a grownup hissed:

“For heaven’s sake, stop this tiff!”

Tiff –

I caught the word in a net.

Out of nowhere –

no, not nowhere: out of my small past,

a raindrop swooped down into the summer day,

round and shimmery,

and shattered into fragments

against a window pane: Tiff.

And then another one: Tiff.

And then another. And another.

And yet another one: Tiff, tiff, tiff- tiff.

And then a whole swarm: thousands

of transparent, juicy water berries

whacking and bursting against window glass

and splitting open with hissy sounds:

Tiff-tiff-tiff-tiff-tiff . . .

More and more of them, swifter and swifter

until they were welded together

into one endless fabric of lispy sounds,

veiling the city,

silvery, grey and cool, blowing outwards

wider and wider

over the East Rand and the West Rand,

and very soon encompassing my universe:

Tifftifftifftiff . . .

And that is how a word, brand new and juicy,

spattered into my life when I was six

on the day of my tiff with Sis Genis.

That summer (“Daardie somer”)

That summer it sometimes happened before

daybreak that some insect or bird

made noises in the fig tree

which sounded like knitting needles of steel

clicking together.

It used to amuse us.

That summer you built a sundial

on the southern side of the garden

and the sun burnished you like

a farmer. Your arms were ochre.

It was the summer of the plethora of roses

and on the grass behind the house

our picnic meals of bread and fish –

The summer

of the evil against your flesh

exposed by the colour test of Hiss.

Extravaganza (“Eztravaganza”)

Towards twilight there was tumult,

but after twenty minutes the thunder

rolled away out of the landscape,

slowly crumbling into nothingness

behind the mountain range. The clouds

melted, and above the cypresses

the stars were once more punching holes

into the indogo. Then, suddenly,

there was this extravaganza,

almost too grotesque te be true:

a full moon hovering on the horizon,

hauntingly huge, the hue of saffron,

like a sun

setting in the Tanqua Karoo.

The cherry tree (“Die kersieboom”)

Until recently he was scarcely more than

fragile scaffolding, a growing enigma.

Now he has become a sweetmeat factory,

a flourishing firm with many branches.

He markets his products in the season

of the rununcula and the rose:

the marble-sized ball-round ruby-red

containers crammed with fructose.

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Ina Rousseau

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Lucas Malan - vertaling in Engels

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Lucas Malan – vertaal deur Charl J.F. Cilliers

Meditation

Lucas Malan

Pigeons have come to nest again. Untidily,

as they usually do. Peacefully here

on the stoep, in the latticework of a vine,

amongst leaves making themselves at home. Briefly.

They sleep now in pairs, as they should. Serenely.

Listen to the whole neighbourhood considering their fate,

our modest neighbours who can sleep safely tonight;

perhaps for the whole season, only just protected,

lightly held in half a calabash of sticks and grass.

(Who still remembers the four who were here last year?)

Here they sleep now, the soft blue-feathered ones,

able to drink all night from the wholesome Milky Way

in motionless dreams of their progeny unscathed,

whilst the Southern Cross unwaverlingly plummets.

(Vertaal deur Charl J. F. Cilliers)

Tags: Afrikaans-Engels, Charl J. F. Cilliers, Lucas Malan

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Versindaba ~ ‘n Kollektiewe weblog vir die Afrikaanse digkuns ~

Posts Tagged ‘Afrikaans-Engels’

Joan Hambidge - vertaal deur/translated by Jo Nel, Charl JF Cilliers & the author

Antjie Krog – translated by/ vertaal deur outeur/author, Denis Hirson, Richard Jürgens, Karen Press and Tony Ullyatt

Wilhelm Knobel – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Six translations for the 36th anniversary of his death

for Doctor Con

[Nagelate Gedigte (1975). Johannesburg: Perskor-Uitgewery, p. 79]

Boerneef – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Wilma Stockenström – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Rosa Keet – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Phil du Plessis – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Jeanne Goosen – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

George Weideman – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

E. W. S. Hammond – vertaal deur Tony Ullyatt

Ina Rousseau - vertaal deur die outeur

Lucas Malan – vertaal deur Charl J.F. Cilliers

(Vertaal deur Charl J. F. Cilliers)

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