Versindaba
~ 'n Kollektiewe weblog vir die Afrikaanse digkuns ~

 WS Merwin

WANNEER WOORDE NIKS MEER Sê NIE

Die Amerikaanse digter W.S Merwin (89) het al meer as 50 poësiebundels gepubliseer, plus ander literêre werke. Hy was tweekeer die wenner van die Pulitzerprys, in 1971 en in 2009.  In 2010 word hy aangewys as die United States Poetry Laureate. In 2013 is hy die eerste ontvanger van die Poolse ‘Zbigniew Herbert International LiteraryAward’ , wat Breyen in Meimaand hierdie jaar kry. (Breyten skryf korliks ook oor Merwin en ander digters in Versindaba Jan. 2017).

Sy poësie werk met metafoor en paradoks, en daar is intuïtiewe oomblikke wat mens slegs so kan lees, feitlik sonder interpretasie-moontlikheid. Oor hom is daar ook gesê: ‘Merwin is our strongest poetry of silence and doubt, vacancy and absence’.

Ek wil ‘n gedig van hom aanhaal wat al hierdie eienskappe het; maar – en dit is belangrik – dat dit ‘n gedig vir ons tyd en ons Afrikaans hier in Suid-Afrika is. Asof hy kon geweet het wat met die skrywers van ‘n sterwende taal gebeur. (Hierdie gedig kom uit die bundel ‘The Rain in the Trees’, 1988)

Losing a Language

 

A  breath leaves the sentences and does not come back

yet the old still remember something that they could say

 

but they know now that such things are no longer believed

and the young have fewer words

 

many of the things the words were about

no longer exist

 

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree

the verb for I

 

the children will not repeat

the phrases their parents speak

 

somebody has persuaded them

that it is better to say everything differently

 

so that they can be admired somewhere

farther and farther away

 

where nothing that is here is known

we have little to say to each other

 

we are wrong and dark

in the eyes of the new owners

 

the radio is incomprehensible

the day is glass

 

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign

everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

 

nobody has seen it happening

nobody remembers

 

that is what the words were made

to prophesy

 

here are the extinct feathers

here is the rain we saw

 

Herinnering, geheue, is ‘n eienskap van Merwin se poësie. Hier is dit duidelik in die droefheid oor die taal wat verdwyn het. Ons het min om vir mekaar te sê. Die  implikasie is, omdat ons nie meer woorde het nie. Asem verlaat die sin en kom nie weer terug nie; net soos dit waaroor die woord was, nie meer bestaan nie. Oral is daar leuens. Woorde kan profeteer, maar net vere bly oor, en die reën wat ons gesien het.

Dikwels is daar paradokse en metafore: reën wat ons hier gesien het, is dood; en aan die begin die uitblaas van die asem. Dan, waar mens miskien intuïtief moet lees, in reëls soos: ‘ the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree / the verb for I”

In sy tweede bundel al (‘The dancing Bears’ ,1954)skryf hy oor die poësie. Dikwels paradoksaal, soos in On the Subject of Poetry:

 

‘ do not understand the world, Father,

By the millpond at the end of the garden

There is a man who slouches listening

To the wheel revolving in the stream, only

There is no wheel to revolve … ‘

 

En aan die einde:

 

‘I speak of him, Father, because he is

There with his hands in his pockets, in the end

Of the garden listening to the turning

Wheel that is not there, but it is the world,

Father, That I do not understand’

 

Om nie te verstaan nie, om taal te verloor. Dis die droewige waarheid vir die digter.

 

Gedig en aanhaling uit  W.S Merwin. Migration, New and selected Poems, bls.286 en 25.  (Copper Canyon Press 2005).

 

Ampie Coetzee.

13 April 2017.