Dit is klaarblyklik nie net hier by ons waar digters en rock ‘n rollers saam kers opsteek by woordfeeste nie. Bruce Springsteen, hoor ek vanoggend, tree in Mei op by die Fairleigh Dickinson Universiteit se jaarlikse Word and Music Festival (Wamfest 2010) in New Jersey. Die sanger gaan deelneem aan ‘n gesprek met die Amerikaanse digter, Robert Pinsky (geb. 1940). Die program beloof, benewens gesprek, ‘a few songs and a few poems’. Ai, ek sou deur vulkaniese as vlieg om daardie praatjie by te woon… Hier is ‘n pragtige gedig van Robert Pinsky:
The Night Game – by Robert Pinsky
Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry–
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.
Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.
I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.
Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.
Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.
A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.
Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.
But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:
So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined
The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky. Tight red stitches.
Rawlings. The bleached
Horsehide white: the color
Of nothing. Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.
“I could have.” The mind. The black
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights. A few years later
On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios.
The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.
Dankie Joan, wat ‘n lekker herinnering! Ek is jaloers.
Een van die hoogtepunte van my lewe was ‘n ontmoeting met Pinsky nadat hy voorgelees het by Harvard sq waar ek navorsing gedoen het. Sy Jersey rain het toe pas verskyn. Nie net ‘n puik digter nie, maar ook ‘n gawe, toeganklike man met wie ek die volgende dag gaan koffie drink het. Hy is ‘n verbluffende digter en hy het geweldig baie gedoen om die digkuns aan gewone mense bekend te stel met sy projek op die internet waar jy kon skryf oor jou gunsteling-gedig: van Clinton tot ‘n verpleegster het deelgeneem.
Maar wat ‘n digter!
Vormvas, ironies en erudiet.
‘n Ware hofdigter.
Ek bewaar my getekende bundel soos goud.