Robert Hass. Vertaling in Afrikaans
Tuesday, October 27th, 2020
Robert Hass Vertaling uit Engels in Afrikaans. Vert. deur Bester Meyer
ʼn Meditasie by Lagunitas
Alle nuwe denke handel oor verlies.
Deur dit word ouderwetse denke weerspieël:
Byvoorbeeld die idee dat ʼn spesifieke punt die ophel-
derende klaarheid van algemene strekking uitwis. Dat die akker-
speg wat kap-kap aan die dooie neergevelde
swart berkeboom, deur om te wees,
die tragiese af val
van ʼn eerste wêreld van ondeelbare lig is.
Of andersyds die opvatting dat
siende dat daar nie in hierdie wêreld iets is
wat met die braambessie se bossie ooreenkom nie,
ʼn woord elegie is — van dit wat dit openbaar.
Ons het laat gisteraand daaroor gepraat en daar was
ʼn gevoel van verdriet in my vriend se stemtoon, amper
die klank van ontevredenheid. En na ̓n ruk het ek besef
dat deur om só te praat — alles oplos: geregtigheid,
denne, hare, vrou, ek en jy. Daar was ʼn vrou met wie ek
liefde gemaak het en ek kon haar skouertjies in my
hande onthou — en by tye die gewelddadige ontsag
van haar daarheid –
soos ʼn dors na sout, soos na die rivier van my kinderdae
met sy wilgereiland; die verspotte musiek van die plesierboot af;
die modderige plekke waar ons klein oranje-silwer sonvissies gevang het.
Dit het weinig met haar te doen gehad.
Ons praat van hunkering, want begeerte bestaan
uit eindelose tussenruimtes. Dit moes dieselfde vir haar gewees het.
Maar ek onthou so baie — hoe haar hande die brood gebreek het;
dit wat haar pa haar gesê het, wat haar seer gemaak het; dit wat sy
gedroom het. Daar is oomblikke wat die liggaam netso numineus
soos woorde is, dae wat as die goeie vlees voortgaan.
Daardie middae en aande van deernis,
met die uiting van: braambessie, braambessie, braambessie
Meditation at Lagunitas
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
Robert Hass, 1979. “Meditation at Lagunitas” from Praise. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
