Breyten Breytenbach. Tr. by/Vertaal deur Bester Meyer uit Afrikaans in Engels
4.6 the poem on journey
on now-a-days
and now-a-nights
I take the bird in my head on journey
and I do not know if she will make it
alive to the other side
be calm, I would say-
I know that the coop is confined
and your wings raw from scraping
against the sides
but do not tripple like that:
you are confusing me
with the words –
I know that there is not much food
in the little bowl of memories
and that your wounds will become infected
but see, you are the poem
which I am yet to write
I am saving you from the fatiguing flight, you see
once you would have soared freely
over this ocean
with the wind to lift you on high
until the sun of the land
would vanish into eternity
but that was when you were not blind
and when you did not yet come looking
for my hand
because you are my unwritten line of flight
bird
and if death should be in the motion
then I shall carefully free you
from the little cage of my head
to fondle over the broken corpse
and coo:
look, I hold you on high to smell
the wind
look, I have written you until here
at our destination
look, we are home
at now-a-days
and now-a-nights
*
6.7 the face in the mirror
it has been written there: thoughts
in order to be
that which movement is
must be compared here
over the level plains
where the heart
mirrors
the environment: impulse
what shudder is
must be there
for the cognisant
heart to know
that which is given
is to live suspended
because even when there: is nothing
in the glass
the moon is still there
ridden hollowed-back in the black
void’s sizzling reflection
like a metaphor which can never
freely exist outside the poem
but moon-written: erected
to go further
with the sails of stone
forever underway
to the sentient-phantom’s
tracks in the old unknown
harbours of glass
my sister, my fiancé: the need
to be able to console you
like a man extend
the moon-rose
of his love to a woman
is to be the incurable wound
of being begotten
in order to journey: to gain
on the stillness
over the dreaming
landscape of our life
as long as there is a south:
a season’s light
with cloud tongues
to nestle communion’s
motion over mountains
and doves with the cheese
and little word-bowls
on the evening tables
to sacrifice another nine year-rings
as rhyming-strings right before your eyes
[All poems above were published in Afrikaans in op weg na kû Breyten Breytenbach Human & Rousseau, 2019. Translated by Bester Meyer.]