poems's posterous

Dancing around the truth

The Tango

crossed the street

with a flourish

and almost bumped

into the Tabasco Sauce.

They greeted each other warmly

and started chatting about their lives

and wives.

In what line of work are you nowadays?

inquired the Tango.

Titillation, replied the Tabasco Sauce with a grin.

Amazing! exclaimed the Tango, I'm also into it!

If you really think about it, the Tobasco Sauce mused,

that is the most important thing

to all of us.

If you cannot be titillated,

is life worth living?

The Tango executed  a few graceful steps, thinking.

Then he swept around the Tobasco Sauce

and faced his old friend.

It is a rather simplistic statement, isn't it?

Perhaps, the Tobasco Sauce answered,

and shook his friend's hand –

but it is nevertheless true.

Yikes! yelled the Tango.

It burns like the blazes,

but it is nice!

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The conscious mind

It has a shape

but it changes continuously,

the cloud

of my thinking.

I can shape it

to a degree

and for a while;

and then it breaks out

to stampede across the prairie

of my reason.

I will lasso

a single thought

and hold it, snorting

with defiance.

I will ride this thought,

even if I'm thrown repeatedly.

Brown stallion, with your passionate

red eye,

what are you really?

I am me, am I?

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Photo DWV

Name your name

The bonsai grower

had named only a few rocks

in his garden.

One he called Cliff.

It stood upright in a pot,

provided a masculine background

to the delicate branches

of a white stinkwood.

Another he called Martha.

She had a deep fissure

which tenderly held

the ingrown trunk of a privet.

There were numerous other rocks

in the garden,

many of them small

and should rather be called stones

or pebbles.

None of them had a name.

Yet they were there.

The bonsai grower

sometimes felt on the verge of pity

for the unnamed ones.

Once you have a name,

he realised,

you have an identity

and responsibility,

and that can bring pain and grief,

but also joy and laughter.

He thought of his own name.

First he was gripped by fear,

then relief, which he accepted.

He smiled stolidly:

his name was his.

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Swart poskaarte

I

Die dagboek vol skryf, toekoms onbekend.

Die kabel neurie 'n volkslied sonder tuiste.

Sneeu val op die loodstil hawe. Skadu's stoei op die kaai.

II

In die middel van die lewe gebeur dit dat die dood kom

en neem mens se mate. Die besoek

is vergete en die lewe gaan voort. Maar die pak klere word stilweg gemaak.

Uit Sweeds vertaal deur De Waal Venter

Svarta vykort

I

Almanackan fullskriven, framtid okänd.

Kabeln nynnar folkvisan utan hemland.

Snöfall i det blystilla havet. Skuggor brottas på kajen.

II

Mitt i livet händer att döden kommer

och tar mått på människan. Det besöket

glöms och livet fortsätter. Men kostymen sys i det tysta.

Det vilda torget, 1983

Lees nog gedigte hier

Coffee

It is a tiger

that pads softly

up to you.

You can smell its body,

it rasps a tongue over your hand,

leaving it tingling.

You look for a moment

into its eyes,

the tawny colour of early dawn,

the pupil the lightless heart

of a universe,

swallowing everything.

It moves away,

it is a male;

testicles worn

in a neat sachet

of fur.

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Tau lepton

Leptomaniac

He had the largest collection

of leptons, probably in the world.

They were kept neatly classified

and neatly exhibited

in their little

plasma boxes

held together by electro-magnets.

He had green ones, smooth ones,

some with rough textures, other that had charm.

Some of them had a peculiar taste

and some with a waspish waist.

His obsession with leptons

had become a source of worry

for the minds at CERN.

Some were worried that he were hogging

so many of the little darlings

that the rest of everything

would be starved of leptons.

One day he got a curious lepton

as a present from a lady physicist.

It was a fascinating object,

but he couldn't find a way to classify it.

He was forced to invite

the physicist to dinner

to discuss the problem.

Other dinners followed

and the minds at CERN started breathing easier.

He's stopped colleting, one dared to say one day.

Today the leptomaniac is happily married to the physicist,

but he still hasn't figured out

her lepton.

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Thin green line

As my day

is being woven

I see a thin green line

sketching a simple pattern.

It ducks away among the browns,

dark reds and murky blues,

emerging again,

winking green against the serious tones.

Here it is again,

the thin green line,

zigging back upon itself,

zagging a little crazily

across the warp.

Thin green line

you will save me today

from the blood reds and lifeless black

woven into my day.

Thin green line,

you outline a leaf,

another one,

there is life in my day.

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Photo: DWV

Thin green line

As my day

is being woven

I see a thin green line

sketching a simple pattern.

It ducks away among the browns,

dark reds and murky blues,

emerging again,

winking green against the serious tones.

Here it is again,

the thin green line,

zigging back upon itself,

zagging a little crazily

across the warp.

Thin green line

you will save me today

from the blood reds and lifeless black

woven into my day.

Thin green line,

you outline a leaf,

another one,

there is life in my day.

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Birthday

I page open today

to find

endless cubic kilometres of sky,

the blue of Delft come to life,

to find

the kind and amused attention

of my friends and family,

held loosely in their cell phones,

to find

that I can see

shapes in water

sculpted by changing light intensities,

to find

myself immersed in words,

all brand new,

waiting to be used effectively;

come on, words

stand to attention when the anthem is sung!

To find

the chip I'm living in

contains billions of circuits of people

and only a very few adjacent to mine.

It is fine

that I can handle only the minutest trickle

of the raging currents of life.

Yes, I will take your message,

but please keep it simple.

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Sappho

Pierre Narcisse Guerin

The ravages of thinking

My thoughts have taken a beating

after having read a Tomas Tranströmer poem,

then listening to a bird's passionate

diatribe outside,

and my wife's footsteps

across the boundaries of unscathed atoms,

the uncertain area that divide languages,

the untidy divisions in time between

the Greek poet Alkaios and the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.

Ny thoughts are slowly gathering themselves

feeling themselves all over

for signs of broken bones

as a dove lifts its blueish-grey baton

to sing me a soothing alkaist.

...

Note

An alkaist stanza is named after the fifth century BC Greek poet, Alkaios.  It is a type of ode consisting of four unrhymed lines. The first wo lines contain eleven syllables, the third contains nine and the last line contains ten syllables.

Alkaios was a contemporary of the poetess Sappho and it is thought that they were lovers. They often performed their poetry together on the island of Lesbos where they both lived.

Relevant poems

Here is a tranlated Tranströmer poem and one by Cavafy.

Alkaiskt

Tomas Tranströmer

'n Woud in Mei. Hier spook my hele lewe:

onsigbare vrag meubels. Voëlgeluide.

In die stil poele, muskietlarwes -

sien jy die woes dansende vraagtekens.

Ek ontsnap na dieselfde plekke, woorde.

koue bries van die hawe, ysdrake lek

aan my nek terwyl die son neerbak.

Die swaar meubelvrag  brand met koel vlamme.

Uit Sweeds vertaal deur De Waal venter

MELANCHOLY OF JASON KLEANDER, POET IN KOMMAGINI, A.D. 595

Constantine Cavafy                 

The aging of my body and my beauty

is a wound from a merciless knife.

I’m not resigned to it at all.

I turn to you, Art of Poetry,

because you have a kind of knowledge about drugs:

attempts to numb the pain, in Imagination and Language.

It is wound from a merciless knife.

Bring your drugs, Art of Poetry—

they numb the wound at least for a little while.

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