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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.