Grafika deur Niccy Miles
Two and eighty years
After so many years I dare bring homage
to your proud heart, to your pride:
dare say that you (you) my beloved,
three or ten small Sistine choirs in me sing
Before, earlier: your hatred against my pride,
when your own I-mushroom in you grew
more about Thomas than chastity I knew
before this holy homage here did grow.
_________
St Peter
A jackal digs into the snow
he speckles red against the white
and starts up, listens, stiff ears upright
to digging somewhere-in-the-yard.
My fatherland, my dry bleak fatherland
something longs that olives in you grow:
that all turn Latinised, small
and tiny chalk-white churches there may stand.
The jackal digs into the snow,
a little sober white he kicks
behind his buttocks out.
And Deaf-Pete keeps on digging.
– N.P. van Wyk Louw uit Tristia, 1962 (vert. Helize van Vuuren, April 2019)