ingrid jonker

- one -

- - from Black Butterflies, Human & Rousseau - -


copyright in translations andre brink & antjie krog
copyright 2007 ingrid jonker trust



Bitter-berry daybreak



Bitter-berry deaybreak
bitter-berry sun
a mirror has broken
between me and him

I try to find the highway
perhaps to run away
but everywhere the footpaths
of his words lead me astray

Pinewood remember
pinewood forget
however much I lose my way
I step on my regret

Parrot-coloured echo
tricks me tricks me on
until I turn beguiled
to retrieve the mocking song

Echo gives no answer
he answers everyone
bitter-berry daybreak
bitter-berry sun


- two -


The child who was shot dead by soldiers in Nyanga


The child is not dead
the child raises his fists against his mother
who screams Africa screams the smell
of freedom and heather
in the locations of the heart under siege

The child raises his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who scream Africa scream the smell
of justice and blood
in the streets of his armed pride

The child is not dead
neither at Langa nor at Nyanga
nor at Orlando nor at Sharpville
nor at the police station in Philippi
where he lies with a bullet in his head

The child is the shadow of the soldiers
on guard with guns saracens and batons
the child is present at all meetings and legislations
the child peeps through the windows of houses and into the
hearts of mothers
the child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is
everywhere
the child who became a man treks through all of Africa
the child who became a giant travels through the whole world

Without a pass


Folks, this epochal poem was read by President Nelson Rohlihlala Mandela at the opening of South Africa's first democratic parliament in 1994



- three -


At the Goodwood Show


They selected me and put me on a throne
inside this prison where I live alone

round which, still free, they saunter by
and cannot understand my voiceless cry

around my neck at First Prize hangs
but in the twilight, nearly mad, I feel the pangs

of longing for the flock, remote from praise
and for the veld of the Karoo, the dust, the haze

where proud I still can stand against the evening breeze
one of the nameless horde that no-one sees,

Without the yoke of fame, without the thirst,
without upon my chest that First.



- four -


Nostalgia for Cape Town


She shelters me within the multitudes of her lap
She says my throoat will not be cut
She says I'm not being put under house arrest
She says I'm not dying of the galloping consumption of love
She doesn't know I'm hungry
She doesn't know I'm scared
She doesn't know that the cock-crow and the house arrest
are mating
I am her enfant terrible
With cups of tea she keeps Table Mountain at bay
And her hands are cool as spoons


July 1964