Marlise Joubert – vertaal deur/translated by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt, Pierre du Preez, Leon de Kock, Jacques Coetzee, marcelle olivier, Charl-Pierre Naudé, & Martjie Bosman.
Marlise Joubert was born in Elim, Limpopo, South Africa. She grew up in Warmbaths [also known as Bela Bela] and has degrees in Librarianship and a BA Honours in Philosophy. After her studies, she worked as a journalist and librarian, including sixteen years at the Fine Arts Department Library of Stellenbosch University. From 2001, she worked for several years in the Protea Book Shop as an accountant and web designer.
Marlise is now a fulltime writer and painter. Her last exhibition of watercolour paintings, Wat die water onthou (What water remembers) took place in 2008 at the Absa KKNK in Oudtshoorn. She and her husband, Louis Esterhuizen, started the popular Afrikaans poetry website, Versindaba. She was the editor of four volumes of poetry containing work of all the poets participating in the yearly Versindaba poetry festivals in Stellenbosch. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1970. Her seventh volume of poetry: splintervlerk was published by Protea Boekhuis in 2011. In 2015 she published her 8th volume: bladspieël (Human & Rousseau). She was the editor of the anthology “in a burning sea”, with translations of 30 Afrikaans poets. She is also the author of three novels, of which the first, Klipkus, (Tafelberg, 1978) was translated by Ena Jansen into Dutch as Rode granaat (Anthos, 1981). She has received several awards for her radio dramas.
archaeologist
you walk against the ox red dusk
the wild dogs with you
you sleep in your tent beside the hippos
that gently munch every tuft of grass each night
or perhaps a puku stirring
past the reeds
where danger might skulk
your journey is in Zambia’s footsteps
pushing out along the Luangwa River
on the banks of a lake
on the dirt road of a reserve
by day your fingers play in the dust
brush away the earth with little brooms
revealing within markers the cracks of a time
when clay was still stories
and you can unravel only shards here or later
for posterity
pegged down in dissertations and museum spaces
child, you are a guileless archeologist
gorgeously alive in a safari suit
hesitant with your small hands
clad in soft suede
to here
where all your years lie swept in
between fragments
of memory under the skull
of my prehistoric heart
(From: passies en passasies, Protea Boekhuis, 2007)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
the language of stone
1
whatever you read in rock carvings
paper or stone accumulates
not in years, but in weight
not the weight of a body
but the weight of history
with volumes I grow deeper into you
without which I cannot breathe
2
I live in sleep’s stone language
in the earth and build a house
with all the words that you read
then cut the vein of a river in two
to become as we are
to become as we ought to be
when I got up I also remembered
that words can remember
no more than only the words
but your speech sounds like stone
rolling and sweeping all that lives before it
is the awakening of the land
and your voice breathes like something
in the weight of love or perhaps
in the mountain’s fold
and always devoted to blue
(From: passies en passasies, Protea Boekhuis, 2007)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
blossom tongue
behind the easy chair
the irises still blooming
after four sterile days.
behind the vase of ribbed glass
cut-off arteries hang loose in the water.
behind purple butterflies bleeds the trauma
of a week ago, no, two or three
when purple forceps pinched my back,
rupturing the rotten cartilage like a nut –
bruising the jellied tissue soft as saffron
and snapping the orange stamen
of braided nerves.
behind the chair,
incessant and fervent,
with purple-spittled tongues
the irises bloom
before the sun squanders the crescent moon
and the stars’ firmament in perfect equilibrium
ligament by ligament
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
to account for you
how could you already walk so ploddingly
on the stilts of your forefathers
how then could your hands grab shakily
at the sunflower in the backyard
child how can I rip you loose
from the black pasts’ banners
or the brutal tides in a land
blinding your small heart
to account for you in a city
that will never preserve your name
in either peace or exultation
to account for you
in your house where bricks
surrender to the crumbling
of yet another couple
where electronic gates
appear to shut tight
against hands hardened around
cold fires and bullets
like dying stars
child to account for you
in a fenceless avenue
or explosions on freeways
is tiresome for my fingers
that have already come to know of dreams
ossifying like dismissive angels
how then should I pronounce you so that damage
dies timidly apart on a mine-dump
so that nothing slits the soles of your feet
never coming near the first words
of your defenceless tongue
how should I then write you up
so that the moon you so admire
always hangs its flaming blossom
over your face
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
Eikendal Blues
i
the morning’s autumn chill is caught
on the cheek like soft glass
my beloved pulls on his gray jacket
my beloved covers his chest
with a black shirt
the sky crystal blue the mountains
stock-still mounds of rock
and a patina on yesterday’s fynbos
we traipse toward the vineyard
to relish a midday meal
at the Bayede restaurant –
Hail to the King on the edge
of a flayed season
soft shadows moving through the dale
and vineyards lift green cloaks
from apple-yellow shoulders
on another continent the leaves become
translucent lime-green
with defenceless nails they claw
against another nomadic spring
my love and I sit down at a rickety table
beside the smooth shield of a pond
eating mussels and codfish
while somewhere in the country
here and there the earth drowns in blood
Hail to the King and the enemy
can come let us await him
ii
suddenly the dam makes
an open eye stippled in the middle
with several pure white ducks
their bundled feathers tiny pillows of peace
on another continent
the first birds awaken now
I watch the ducks on the black pond
I try to become wise –
they do not ponder death
or tomorrow
they simply think of nothing
my love and I talk about dominant cultures
and the revolt of counter-cultures against them
while he looks at a young couple laughing
at tourists or waiters with plates
the unwearied play of children
in between gnarled oak trees
iii
I would want to erase thoughts
of our mournful mortality I would want to
become wise and free like the floating
ducks with breaths that can swim together
over the water’s dark cold
how smooth my beloved in his skin
how vivid the line of his neck
how fervent and timid the bow of his lip
on another journey the leaves begin to erupt
while the mountains arrange blue banners
not far above the yellowing vineyard and nothing
nothing mourns openly
on this day –
finches’ nests stir the wind on the banks
and the white eye on the pond
is swept unnoticed beneath
a willow tree
my beloved wears a black shirt
I must remember it just so –
behind him the restored white
back of a wine cellar and the colour
of autumn crystallising through
the thinning hair
on another continent the leaves
dazzle the horizon
Hail to the King
and the enemy can come –
we await him
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
Translators:
Tony Ullyatt was born in Nottingham, and educated in India, Sudan, and Kenya before coming to do an undergraduate degree in English and French in Durban, South Africa. After finishing a Master’s degree in English at the University of Auckland, he wrote a PhD on American poetry at Unisa. He has further Master’s degrees in Psychology, Myth Studies, and Applied Language Studies. He also has a PhD in Myth Studies. He has won prizes for his radio drama and poetry as well as the FNB/Vita Award for Translation. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of the North-West’s Potchefstroom campus.
Gisela Ullyatt was born in Bloemfontein, where she studied at the University of the Free State. After completing an Honours degree and a Master’s degree in German, she finished a Master’s degree in English (Applied Language Studies) as well as a Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Her poetry has appeared in journals both locally and internationally, and she is a prize-winning short-story writer. Through the University of the North-West, she is currently working on a PhD which undertakes a Buddhist reading of Mary Oliver’s poetry.
***
Other translations from “passies en passasies”, Marlise Joubert. Protea Bookhouse, 2007.
Ballad for the lovers
(after reading Yehuda Amichai & based on the structure of
his poem “Ballad in the Streets of Buenos Aires)
And a man meets a woman late in his life
Battered and barren as the landscape
Wistful and white as the silence of siesta
And soon she shows him her hungry lips
And soon she shows him the rift in her heart
And gives him all her hours, desolate, eclipsed
And she lives in the dust of her humble possessions
And the rain welling up starts there in her eyes
And he decides to be tender
And she knows the conversation between tablecloth and cutlery
And the knife and the fork of so many years
But, by degrees, he takes the hilt in his hand
And his hair grows long like verses, and soft like hers, like hair
And his words thread through hers with quiet and longing
And becomes whole in the outcry of her body
And blindly they walk towards the blush of the summer
And the words become flesh, as a valley thicks with fruit
And the impatience of seasons turns them into lovers
And he will have her seated at table in the days to come
And he will tempt her with new dishes and cutlery
And blend the candlelight with adagios, and jazz
And still they will be there when autumn crumbles
And there they will be when all time ceases
And there they will be for the linen-white shrouding
And she will enfold the sighs of his poems in her flesh
And also the knife and the fork of eternal togetherness
And they will enjoy the words that became bread
Like bread they will keep feasting each other, and propogate
Because he decided upon tenderness
[co. translation: marcelle olivier]
Milkwood Beach
dunes put their bristly heads together.
listen listen to the clamour and soughing
of waves churned into milky streaks.
seabirds swerve to evade the wind
beating wings against the summery spray.
indiscernibly the dunes move their hips away.
from the distant swirling fog break free
vaporous joggers riders on their horses.
and all become a gallop across the beach against a sun
sinking his burning ship into fathomless waters.
gold turns the grey to a yoghurty cloud of rose-quartz.
a dog drags a seaweed limb across the sand.
to the left Table Mountain rises like a castle
from the encircling channels full of drifting smoke.
to the right stands Koeberg quietly nuclear
atoms singing unheard into the atmosphere.
facing a wide house shoots of maize thrust upward
from the patch of unduned sand.
the scorched leaves soon resemble sun-dried fish.
a housewife picks long-fingers of green beans
grills the Sunday yellow-tailed cod with lemon juice
laughs and drinks her peachy sparkling wine.
I stare at hazy figures dawdling peacefully with
kids and dogs in the lukewarm dusk
spilling in profusion onto homes already lit. another stallion
having rhythmically cantered through evaporates in cream.
windows and sliding doors stare back with dull
glassy eyes. the drone of a boat
fades. two small chairs are being folded up.
Koeberg is split darkly against the moon.
lovers embrace then tear apart.
in Table Mountain’s castle
someone is blowing out the candles.
[Translation: Pierre du Preez]
in memoriam: Lisbé
That’s when she stopped, she turned her face to the wind,
shut her eyes – Jorie Graham,
“Self-portrait as Apollo and Daphne”
steel needn’t have torn open her skimpy body
it was not necessary, such force hammering into her
repeatedly –
she’d already said her goodbyes, before entering the blood inferno
before the screwdriver hand of an intruder
threw her into water and fled
she’d already taken her leave before arriving back home
already greeted her children, in front of school
the colour of the boy’s shirt and the colour
of his watchful eyes
already straightened out her daughter’s gym-slip
against wear, such thin little shoulders
already taken a step back, into herself
into the cracked skull of a dream
a voice that would call
on the other side of the morning sun’s earthly cloak
she’d already died
when she greeted her husband at a station
taking him further along with nothing
but the weight of memories
of them
and especially of her
happiness balanced on a needlepoint
on every horizon glancing off the train window
the mountain growing bigger as it gets closer and her heart
so inexplicably light in his memory
the way breath rests on his tongue
her farewells already said
when she turned to go home
darkened in the last stillness of rest
without words without warning without any suspicion
far too early
the little communion
of her body
appallingly punctured
[translation: Leon de Kock]
woman in Afghanistan
after seeing the film Kandahar
the woman was on her way to Kandahar
the woman was on her way alone
in the sand in the dunes of blood
in the blood of the sun
to save her sister from suicide
before the coming of the great eclipse
alone on her way the woman was with her garment
a wave of blue a dissonant flag
across the yellow rivers of sand
etched against horizon upon horizon
like a person
with the shoulders of a woman
with the head of a woman
veiled against non-existence
the woman on her way to Kandahar
sways on the donkey-wagon
ignores the soldiers and landmines
the suffocating fire
listens fearlessly with her heart against a jar
sees men on crutches at the Red Cross Camp
hobble one-legged over a hill of stone
to be the first to grab the wooden legs
when they fall from the sky with parachutes
she gives her last money to a child
to take her to Kandahar
she refuses the gold ring which he
steals from a skeleton between sandbagged walls
and on the last day
just the other side of the last dune
in front of the yellow stone wall of Kandahar
in a procession of singers
and brides and wedding-guests
she is stopped by rebels
with the barrel of a gun against her cheek
she is pointed out as an unknown woman
uncovered behind her burka
by checkered shafts of light
she is turned away as the unwelcome one
who wanted to save her sister in Kandahar
before the coming of the eclipse
before her attempt at darkness
one sorrowful death too many in the sand
in the dunes of blood in the middle of the day
in the sunless night of Kandahar
[translation: Jacques Coetzee]
archaeologist
you walk at the hour of ox-red dusk
with the wild dogs
you sleep in your tent next to hippopotami
who noiselessly chew each blade of grass every night
or perhaps a buck that moves stealthily
past the bull-rushes
where danger might be lurking
your journey follows the footprints of Zambia
washed out by the Luangwa River
on the banks of a lake
in the dirt road of a reserve
by day your fingers play in the earth
sweep the ground away with little brushes
lay bare within boundaries the cracks of a time
when clay was still a story
and you can only decipher shards here or later
for future generations
enclosed in dissertations and museum halls
child, you are an artless archaeologist
lovely and alive in a safari suit
hesitant with your small hands
gloved in soft suede
until you come to this place
where all your years lie embedded
between shards
of memory underneath the skull
of my prehistoric heart
[translation: Jacques Coetzee]
horses
horses are sovereigns of summits
and the wheat crowns of dunes and fire steeples
horses are kings cloaked in blue
ocre almond dappling like grey
blacker than ovens whiter than talc
manes tangling in eddies of wind
horses are kings with high hats and hooves
hurtling over mountains rivers and reefs
savannah and cliffs and rifts with fervour
oh sovereigns of stone with
hooves draped in banners
drumming on amethyst amethyst
hooves in stone simbal
dolomite dolomite
ruby are the orbs of horses
ruby like stars against the dusk
where the dust-devil turns where sands
circle like powder into nothing
brown are the eyes of horses
brown like mould on mud
where the sun lies down softly
in pans of summer water
horses are sovereigns who snort and gallop
across town squares and plateaus of people
horses carry cargo of children and noble riders
or clutches of old folk like huts on the back
horses neigh alone and rapt among rhythms of trees
horses are fish in fata morganas
swishing from the left and to the right
returning to the light as if gods
want to catch their heads in their nets
with hooves draped in banners
drumming drumming amethyst amethyst
hooves in stone simbals
dolomite dolomite
horses are princes decanting the galaxy
ash of the morning the tardy pace
horses are princes in a hand-held trot
with prancing muscles
dancing through the land
drumming drumming amethyst amethyst
horses are women who discover
secrets in the road
women with flanks that shimmer
in the sweat of day
camping among moons and in snow
in vapour and grass
lying down in a stable like a star in our pass
horses are kings and princes and fish and women
horses are more than salpetre of breath
[translation: Charl-Pierre Naudé]
Warnings
I have to warn you about the wind that moves
the wind that moves the hair of curtains
I have to warn you about the scattering of feathers
the guineafowls dropped in our yard
I have to warn you about the moles that gnaw
the juicy roots the moles who blindly whore around
in the burrows of ambrosia o I have to warn you
about the shells of stars that hang in trees
because they shine in vain
I have to warn you
against the moon’s misty eye
the sun’s creamy cheek against your face
I have to warn you about the lamb with its back turned on us
with its broken paw and woolly head turned to the stove
I have to warn you
about the lamb that flap its ears in the fan of air
about the dogs barking down the street as they hunt for food
in rubbish bins
about the black rags of birds on the washingline
I have to warn you about my little box of rose paper
with all my jewels the earrings the pendants
and the topaz rings
I have to warn you that all this means nothing to love
less than words less than water less than bread
because love only has eyes for each other
love is without glasses in each other
love is eyes blown against each other
love is without everything without
love is a pine forest
love is a heaving pine forest
where the woodcutter
incessantly cuts
I have to warn you
[translation: Martjie Bosman]