Carina Stander – vertaal deur/translated by Leon de Kock
Carina Stander was born on 20 November 1976. She grew up on a farm in the Waterberg. After obtaining an honours degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pretoria, she worked for a few years for sculptors in Cambridge and the Scottish Highlands and participated in various art exhibitions. She completed a masters degree in Creative Writing (cum laude) through the University of Cape Town. She had two volumes of poetry published by Tafelberg: die vloedbos sal weer vlieg (2006) and woud van nege en negentig vlerke (2009). A number of these poems have been set to music by Herman van den Berg, Souldada from the Netherlands and cellist Ha!Man. Stander’s poems and short stories are prescribed for secondary schools. Since 2005 she has been working as a freelance journalist for five magazines, twice receiving the Media24 award for Article Writer of the Year at Lééf. She lives in a coastal forest with her husband and sons.
The pyjama pants
by the time we get home the blood on your pyjama pants has dried
but, like wounds, the windows are sticky and slimy;
brutality hovers like a wolf
in our house
its aftertaste
revealed in the darkening dusk –
these walls will surely collapse
under the weight, the memory of our honeymoon
in Mozambique:
it must be said you did not then want me to bleed –
the hand-stitched seam of your pyjama pants
bulging giddy white
like a year-old lamb
that’s how I want to remember you:
standing like that in the door of the hut
with the cloth of Bazaruto around your hips
as you stretch your arms upwards,
your shoulders the colour of dunes
your supple back compelling me to write
but now death has broken through our front door
now your pyjama pants are bloodied like a virgin
and to expel this fog of fear
won’t be easy;
that iron smell, the sweat of terror
that sound of a coming death
look, the jackals crossing the hills
are changing into street curs
now they’re crawling into anteater-holes
they eat bird-eggs and buck;
there was even a flamingo-wing
somewhere in the fog
cowardly foxes running off, tails between their legs
greedy hyena-chops, drunk with blood
there is a beauty that the pack
will never take from us:
even if they were to catch you
you would send a bushbuck to console me
or a steenbuck with little Bambi-feet
or a waterbuck grazing in the evening air
on berrybush and wild fig
but you have not been taken away
you are here in flesh and blood
your swimming body rimples the island seam
you laugh at the lourie
who lives in my armpits –
I am just crazy for you
tonight we’ll leave the front door open
and light up some lamps;
you go fetch your pyjama pants from the chest;
beneath my night dress, like fish
my breasts are swimming –
you stroll freely
through the acres of my sleep
mercy falls to the earth like a poem
because you are here you are here
listen how our fears
slumber on the windowsill
(From: die vloedbos sal weer vlieg, Tafelberg, 2006)
(Tr. by Leon de Kock)
the hot berg wind of your name
Tsitsikamma
the hot berg wind of your name
echoes across the coastal forest
of the south
while the forlorn plantation
in the valley
prunes its hanging moss,
you blow through the gnarled
bush of a white milkwood
you let fruit rain down upon me
in splashes of dark purple;
you caress the yellow-wood’s flaky bark
and you feed the bats yellow fruit
from the highest branches
sometimes you’re everywhere and here
you wind-whirl me like a man;
you lean against the carbuncled stem
of a wild red currant, you stare at me;
the veins on your arms
expand like roots through earth;
your skeleton shifts in the wind
like the threaded stem of a forest elder
my cheeks turn to the colours
of clattering stones
on an unknown beach;
lilac or off-pink
like the eyes of a cave-fish
still, you go out and bring me
finest cream flowers in winter
and the winged seeds of a kamassie¹;
our bed is knitted
from the secret leaves of a birch
come, let us walk on naked feet
through the dripping forest,
let us go see, at daybreak,
how the waves spray wild lace
up against the horizon
where you can almost hear whales mating
in the filmy blue expanse
of the ocean
that is where I shall give you my version of love
(From: die vloedbos sal weer vlieg, Tafelberg, 2006)
(Tr. by Leon de Kock)
wilderness
Bergfontein, Limpopo 1968
at the age of 32 ma granted love
like the gift of a story-book
to pa
she slept beneath scorpions,
other constellations too
one at a time, leopards
spotted along their flanks
with shapes like roses
prowl the night kraal
cracking calves’ skulls –
pa travelled two hundred miles to fetch them
on horseback, grazing as they went
a rifle cracks and a hoarse cry
expires on the mountain –
ma inherits two cubs
from the belly of a predator
the house is rough and ready
and any tree a lavatory
but at night
by candlelight
she marks essays
in Afrikaans and German
in a kitchen of stars
nurses poems like chicks
in crocheted blankets
they use her teacher money
to plaster up a fireplace
from slate floor to wooden roof
and still the wild evades their embrace
beneath the farm-line phone
a black mamba lies hissing
atop her eggs:
upper body erect
mouth stretched wide open
head long and flat
like a coffin
ma writes letters to her mother:
cubs geckos
and lizard plus mate
rest up on the afternoon stoep
huddling tighter at her feet
eight years later a child is born
from the words of a ma
and the wildness of a pa
(From: woud van nege en negentig vlerke, Tafelberg, 2009)
(Tr. by Leon de Kock)
messages from above
Giant Forest, California
through my fingers snow sifts in ornate handwriting
under my boots snow cracks a code
over a waterfall snow screams soundlessly
white poems on blank paper, everywhere
here, where prairie wolves loom
and squirrels drive each other away
through a dead-quiet oak forest
– tree-branches like flamboyant frills
on a gypsy’s dress –
here, spoor² is the voice of an animal
when I touched the giant sequoia,
felt like braille its brown, rutted trunk,
flakes like blossoms fell
fell from this deserted cathedral
strings blow like sentences from Above –
red-hot murmurs, plosive-soft
every story begins with these words:
a Stranger’s wooden leg
makes mad marks in the snow
everywhere, white poems on blank paper
(From: woud van nege en negentig vlerke, Tafelberg, 2009)
(Tr. by Leon de Kock)
¹ Kamassie: Gonioma kamassi. In Tsitsikamma area, Southern – Cape, SA.
² Spoor: trace, track, footprint, footmark. From :Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Translator:
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Leon de Kock is a writer, translator and scholar. He has published three volumes of poetry in English (Bloodsong, 1997, gone to the edges, 2006, and Bodyhood, 2010), a novel and several works of literary translation, including the novel Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk and a collection of poems, Intimately Absent (Intieme Afwesige) by Cas Vos. Translations of Etienne van Heerden’s novel, In Stede van die Liefde, and Vos’s Duskant die Donker (Before it Darkens; selected poems). De Kock holds a chair of English at the University of Stellenbosch. He has won several prizes for his translations. |