Breyten Breytenbach. Translated to English by / vert. deur Waldemar Gouws
embarrassing knowledge of nightfall
(or a shy look on darkness)
what would be the difference
between halt and shalt
in particular since one should be moving haltingly
along to reach that far row of fruit trees
on the road to mount darkness
no hurry
clarity will dawn unaided
in the black firmament above
where embers at the camp down sites
of a host of light lives ago
are still aglow
but as you climb to the top of the mountain
to witness the oneness of heaven and earth
being disconcerted then
a wind in the eyes
smell of starsmoke somewhere
crickets lower down a kloof
the dark of the moon a chip of invisibility
and the choppy awareness that dying itself is eternal?
hardly up and about
and matter-of-factness flouted
already deluded to think that light could be understood
in the light of concerns
and hence to write twilight conscious
that all existence will come to doom
in the stench of the dead baboon?
isn’t this a disgrace?
(c) Tr. by Waldemar Gouws / 2015 of the unpublished poem ‘skaamkennis van die aand’ of Breyten Breytenbach