Ilse van Staden – vertaal deur/ translated by Charl JF Cilliers
Ilse van Staden was born in Pretoria in 1972, but grew up in the Waterberg in the Limpopo Province. She matriculated at Pro Arte High School (Pretoria) and studied veterinary science at the University of Pretoria. From 1997 to 2005 she was a full-time veterinary surgeon. Subsequently she has been a part-time vet and a part-time writer. Her first volume of poems Watervlerk (2003) won the Eugene Marais and Ingrid Jonker prizes. She completed her B.A. degree in Creative Writing through the University of South Africa. In 2008 Lapa published her second volume of poems Fluisterklip. In 2009 Pandora Books published Die dood is ‘n mooi blou blom for the author as a bibliophile edition.
They Say It Is Raining
They say it is raining
cats and dogs and tadpoles with toes
and in the rain gauge mosquito larvae drown
dreaming of drier things,
flat rock-hollows overflow,
empty out of birds
that bewilderedly bathe in droplets from branches –
incessantly
it rains
between clusters of termites and reeds
mired in the clay of broader streams,
water clogs the low-water bridges
because the farmers prayed too hard this time
and somewhere a blue tractor sinks
up to its wheels into the fields
like lungfish in the mud when it was dry –
it is raining, they say
and toddlers already know
about crossing t’s and dotting i’s
like droplets
around rainbows.
(From:Watervlerk,Tafelberg, 2003)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Death Is An Illusion
There is no other side,
just here
and these words against the wall
with windows of our daring or faith.
As if behind a window pane
a landscape of illusions grew
while we peered and wondered
(for wondering can be belief)
is eternity always this
imagined external view?
(From:Watervlerk,Tafelberg, 2003)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
Gasp
The silence that now often fills
the horizons where my landscapes lie,
the cough that hovers in a throat’s phlegmatic trough,
at times the dragging feet of an aimless wind:
my stony breath is spent.
With time spaces fill up with dripping limestone,
in hidden corners sheltered sounds that slowly calcify.
I gasp for air too rarefied to breathe,
petrified rhymes whisper in my head.
My throat comes caving in.
Somewhere a word turned to stone.
(From: Fluisterklip, LAPA, 2008)
(Tr. by Charl JF Cilliers)
come
come chickens, come angels
sleep in the niches of the morning
sleep the sleep of the dead
in cages, on roof ridges
in shelters, in block houses
breathe through embrasures as if through spiracles,
the way that winged creatures breathe
in the evanescence of time’s passing
in passageways, in graves
come chickens, come angels
sleep death’s sleep like a morning dream.
(From: Die dood is ‘n mooi blou blom (Pandora Boeke, 2009)
(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.