Marlise Joubert was born in Elim, Limpopo, South Africa. She grew up in Warmbaths [also known as Bela Bela] and has degrees in Librarianship and a BA Honours in Philosophy. After her studies, she worked as a journalist and librarian, including sixteen years at the Fine Arts Department Library of Stellenbosch University. From 2001, she worked for several years in the Protea Book Shop as an accountant and web designer.
Marlise is now a fulltime writer and painter. Her last exhibition of watercolour paintings, Wat die water onthou (What water remembers) took place in 2008 at the Absa KKNK in Oudtshoorn. She and her husband, Louis Esterhuizen, started the popular Afrikaans poetry website, Versindaba. She was the editor of four volumes of poetry containing work of all the poets participating in the yearly Versindaba poetry festivals in Stellenbosch. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1970. Her seventh volume of poetry: splintervlerk was published by Protea Boekhuis in 2011. She is also the author of three novels, of which the first, Klipkus, (Tafelberg, 1978) was translated by Ena Jansen into Dutch as Rode granaat (Anthos, 1981). She translated some poems of Yhuda Amichai into Afrikaans. She has received several awards for her radio dramas.
between going and staying
(a letter to Octavio Paz in reply to
Entre irse y quedarse)
here in Melkbos everything drifts, not going, not staying
the winter sun still in love with the glow of the sea
the long beach is now a bay of leisurely walkways
beside which the small town glistens like an egg
everything is far: Table Mountain, boats and seagulls
everything is nearby, eluding any sense of feeling
at the Damhuis we poets come together
the steak, the fish, the wine at rest in the colours of their names
children replay our years that have passed
unattached words are strewn across the tables
the light transforms the garden figures in a theatre
whilst cars brush past to other destinations
i discover myself in your eye, Octavio
like blood the day’s heart flows towards its end
on the way home the coast disappears in harbours and valleys
we had come and, yes, we had left: a breath’s journey away
(Unpublished poem by Marlise Joubert. Tr by/vert. deur Charl Cilliers, 2012)
*
archaeologist
you walk against the ox red dusk
the wild dogs with you
you sleep in your tent beside the hippos
that gently munch every tuft of grass each night
or perhaps a puku stirring
past the reeds
where danger might skulk
your journey is in Zambia’s footsteps
pushing out along the Luangwa River
on the banks of a lake
on the dirt road of a reserve
by day your fingers play in the dust
brush away the earth with little brooms
revealing within markers the cracks of a time
when clay was still stories
and you can unravel only shards here or later
for posterity
pegged down in dissertations and museum spaces
child, you are a guileless archeologist
gorgeously alive in a safari suit
hesitant with your small hands
clad in soft suede
to here
where all your years lie swept in
between fragments
of memory under the skull
of my prehistoric heart
(From: passies en passasies, Protea Boekhuis, 2007)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
the language of stone
1
whatever you read in rock carvings
paper or stone accumulates
not in years, but in weight
not the weight of a body
but the weight of history
with volumes I grow deeper into you
without which I cannot breathe
2
I live in sleep’s stone language
in the earth and build a house
with all the words that you read
then cut the vein of a river in two
to become as we are
to become as we ought to be
when I got up I also remembered
that words can remember
no more than only the words
but your speech sounds like stone
rolling and sweeping all that lives before it
is the awakening of the land
and your voice breathes like something
in the weight of love or perhaps
in the mountain’s fold
and always devoted to blue
(From: passies en passasies, Protea Boekhuis, 2007)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
blossom tongue
behind the easy chair
the irises still blooming
after four sterile days.
behind the vase of ribbed glass
cut-off arteries hang loose in the water.
behind purple butterflies bleeds the trauma
of a week ago, no, two or three
when purple forceps pinched my back,
rupturing the rotten cartilage like a nut –
bruising the jellied tissue soft as saffron
and snapping the orange stamen
of braided nerves.
behind the chair,
incessant and fervent,
with purple-spittled tongues
the irises bloom
before the sun squanders the crescent moon
and the stars’ firmament in perfect equilibrium
ligament by ligament
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
to account for you
how could you already walk so ploddingly
on the stilts of your forefathers
how then could your hands grab shakily
at the sunflower in the backyard
child how can I rip you loose
from the black pasts’ banners
or the brutal tides in a land
blinding your small heart
to account for you in a city
that will never preserve your name
in either peace or exultation
to account for you
in your house where bricks
surrender to the crumbling
of yet another couple
where electronic gates
appear to shut tight
against hands hardened around
cold fires and bullets
like dying stars
child to account for you
in a fenceless avenue
or explosions on freeways
is tiresome for my fingers
that have already come to know of dreams
ossifying like dismissive angels
how then should I pronounce you so that damage
dies timidly apart on a mine-dump
so that nothing slits the soles of your feet
never coming near the first words
of your defenceless tongue
how should I then write you up
so that the moon you so admire
always hangs its flaming blossom
over your face
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
Eikendal Blues
i
the morning’s autumn chill is caught
on the cheek like soft glass
my beloved pulls on his gray jacket
my beloved covers his chest
with a black shirt
the sky crystal blue the mountains
stock-still mounds of rock
and a patina on yesterday’s fynbos
we traipse toward the vineyard
to relish a midday meal
at the Bayede restaurant –
Hail to the King on the edge
of a flayed season
soft shadows moving through the dale
and vineyards lift green cloaks
from apple-yellow shoulders
on another continent the leaves become
translucent lime-green
with defenceless nails they claw
against another nomadic spring
my love and I sit down at a rickety table
beside the smooth shield of a pond
eating mussels and codfish
while somewhere in the country
here and there the earth drowns in blood
Hail to the King and the enemy
can come let us await him
ii
suddenly the dam makes
an open eye stippled in the middle
with several pure white ducks
their bundled feathers tiny pillows of peace
on another continent
the first birds awaken now
I watch the ducks on the black pond
I try to become wise –
they do not ponder death
or tomorrow
they simply think of nothing
my love and I talk about dominant cultures
and the revolt of counter-cultures against them
while he looks at a young couple laughing
at tourists or waiters with plates
the unwearied play of children
in between gnarled oak trees
iii
I would want to erase thoughts
of our mournful mortality I would want to
become wise and free like the floating
ducks with breaths that can swim together
over the water’s dark cold
how smooth my beloved in his skin
how vivid the line of his neck
how fervent and timid the bow of his lip
on another journey the leaves begin to erupt
while the mountains arrange blue banners
not far above the yellowing vineyard and nothing
nothing mourns openly
on this day –
finches’ nests stir the wind on the banks
and the white eye on the pond
is swept unnoticed beneath
a willow tree
my beloved wears a black shirt
I must remember it just so –
behind him the restored white
back of a wine cellar and the colour
of autumn crystallising through
the thinning hair
on another continent the leaves
dazzle the horizon
Hail to the King
and the enemy can come –
we await him
(From: splintervlerk, Protea Boekhuis, 2011)
(Tr. by Tony & Gisela Ullyatt)
Translators:
Tony Ullyatt was born in Nottingham, and educated inIndia,Sudan, andKenyabefore coming to do an undergraduate degree in English and French inDurban,South Africa. After finishing a Master’s degree in English at theUniversityofAuckland, he wrote a PhD on American poetry at Unisa. He has further Master’s degrees in Psychology, Myth Studies, and Applied Language Studies. He also has a PhD in Myth Studies. He has won prizes for his radio drama and poetry as well as the FNB/Vita Award for Translation. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of the North-West’s Potchefstroom campus.
Gisela Ullyatt was born inBloemfontein, where she studied at the University of theFree State. After completing an Honours degree and a Master’s degree in German, she finished a Master’s degree in English (Applied Language Studies) as well as a Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Her poetry has appeared in journals both locally and internationally, and she is a prize-winning short-story writer. Through the University of the North-West, she is currently working on a PhD which undertakes a Buddhist reading of Mary Oliver’s poetry.
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