Versindaba kompetisie vir vertaalde gedigte (103)
Gabeba Baderoon. Vertaling van Engels in Afrikaans. Vert. deur Elmarie Viljoen-Massyn.
Die blou van die nag voor ons weg is
Seemeeue wit teen wit steengeboue
en ʼn geskilderde plafon blou lug.
Stilte teen skemer, dus hoor ons hul vlerke klap
teen die onderkant van hul lywe.
Ons verloor onsself sonder verlies
in plaveiselstrate en die donkerwordende ure.
Die blou is die blou van laataand,
die blou van die nag voor ons weg is.
In die stad se sononder-argitektuur
versag marmerbeelde tot ander digthede.
Meeue maal om verweerde klipsuile,
hul vloeibare gekrys swewend bo ons vertrek.
***
The blue of the night before we left
Gabeba Baderoon
Seagulls white against white stone buildings
and a painted ceiling of blue sky.
Stillness at dusk so we hear their wings beat
against the underside of their bodies.
We lose ourselves without loss
in tessellated streets and the darkening hours.
The blue is the blue of late evening,
the blue of the night before we left.
In the city’s architecture of nightfall
marble statues soften into other densities.
Gulls wheel around columns of pitted stone,
their liquid cries floating above our leaving.
Bronverwysing:
Baderoon, Gabeba. “The blue of the night before we left”, The history of intimacy: Poems. Cape Town: Kwela Books, p. 39.