Words Against the Clouds by Breyten Breytenbach | Poems Rethabile Likes
Words Against the Clouds
by Breyten Breytenbach
—‘shoe’ ‘desert rose’ ‘mud’—
(luck wanted
that I could today pick up a few words
for you
to be able to describe
that one doesn’t only walk and think about nothing on the ground,
but also about words in their meaning
be seen, between toilet rolls, images, fossilised fish
(don’t step on the wrong words!
‘laying the terror of mines,’ you once said
‘is in the delayed action; plant your bomb
and one day, much later, someone
who you don’t know
is blown sky high’
so the word also becomes flesh
(‘I have read your verses and fears:
like desert roses they are: anachronistic, with an outside
and an inside, they come from deep
without past or future, and yet they can withstand
the soft explosions of sand and time
(in times of war people eat mud
to survive like frogs on land and in water;
in times of peace it is a
a beauty cleanser . . .
I doesn’t matter
(the moon walks on
even if she day by day becomes more of
an empty shoe without bunions or rhythm
the moon carries her steps
across the sprawling dove grey dunes of the Kalahari
and the restless hills of Juda:
at least she doesn’t at all befoul the mud
(in a shoe full of mud I would want to plant your desert roses
to give the moon a sentence
and a little word—sum I shall write on the laces:
‘when you sleep on too long
you eventually rot’
that what is known as
death on the feet . . .
(like this I tried stopping the words in the verse
dear and sad Yehuda,
is death in the picking up or in the word?
—for Yehuda Amichai
(luck wanted
that I could today pick up a few words
for you
to be able to describe
that one doesn’t only walk and think about nothing on the ground,
but also about words in their meaning
be seen, between toilet rolls, images, fossilised fish
(don’t step on the wrong words!
‘laying the terror of mines,’ you once said
‘is in the delayed action; plant your bomb
and one day, much later, someone
who you don’t know
is blown sky high’
so the word also becomes flesh
(‘I have read your verses and fears:
like desert roses they are: anachronistic, with an outside
and an inside, they come from deep
without past or future, and yet they can withstand
the soft explosions of sand and time
(in times of war people eat mud
to survive like frogs on land and in water;
in times of peace it is a
a beauty cleanser . . .
I doesn’t matter
(the moon walks on
even if she day by day becomes more of
an empty shoe without bunions or rhythm
the moon carries her steps
across the sprawling dove grey dunes of the Kalahari
and the restless hills of Juda:
at least she doesn’t at all befoul the mud
(in a shoe full of mud I would want to plant your desert roses
to give the moon a sentence
and a little word—sum I shall write on the laces:
‘when you sleep on too long
you eventually rot’
that what is known as
death on the feet . . .
(like this I tried stopping the words in the verse
dear and sad Yehuda,
is death in the picking up or in the word?
—for Yehuda Amichai
(⇒ Translated from the Afrikaans by Ampie Coetzee)
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