The Johannesburg Review of Books presents previously unpublished poetry by Rustum Kozain.
~~~
Extract: Moedertang
(for Gaalied)
Die kruiwawiel se skreeugeluid
kerm hy droefgeestig uit
terwyl die skeemring vinnig daal,
die tarentaal.
Hy soek – en dit is ook al laat –
vir hom ’n kameraad,
om in ’n boom die eensaamheid
en nag te slyt.
– Totius
I
We sit and talk, two old friends ageing,
joking about ageing
as the sun goes down across the road
and some guineafowl rise screeching
slowly up into a nesting conifer.
Friends not seen for months, a year,
two years, of disease and death,
of people near and distant dying,
we two sit and talk that language
of our blood this time once again,
words found and made, reformed,
and found again rollicking in the mouth
in that old moment in the wind
where find time we two old friends,
the scree-scree-screech
of two old wheelbarrows
maudlin grey between love and scorn:
Die kruiwawiel se skreeugeluid
kerm ons droefgeestig uit…
II
Who are you? You who grew up
into a language
as it itself grew in you
until you were and always was
also it, the body
making love and it returning love
a language fucking you
until
tongue-fucking
loop en nai julle mekaar
tot al twie sopnat is.
Who are you to make claim
at all to how it was
and is
and should be understood,
the lovechild of tongue and word
the heterodox
and also too and always
all the tradition of your rural mouth,
your semi-rural peri-urban boeijong mouth.
Ja, op my tong val dit anners,
diepgelek van armpit tot lies
vars swiet soet soes hooi
die oorskulp
lobbe langs
die tong se binne krul krul krulletjies
in die hart vannie oor
die nek se holte
skouerblad
sleutelbeen
bors en ribbekas
die tong se val
binne in sy groef van leed
en wit en donker
die breytenboggel en die wonderbom
wat uit die tong se stoet nog hier kom staan en blom.
III
Nog eenmaal wil ek in die skemeraand
weer by jou lê en in jou kom tongstaan,
weer met my lek op in jou donker skiet,
en lê luister, en al word ek teer en dof,
hoe jou klein klippie ’n lek-strek van jou lies
met tong teen tong hier teen my tongklap plof.
TL;DR: Waving, drowning
But that’s all them bastards have left us: words.
– Derek Walcott
I find no palliatives from the soothsayers,
and no solace from poets
who melt their own pages, words auto-scorching words;
and neither also from the scientists
who turn away lost in sonnets quietly
enumerating the instantaneously transitory
everlasting in an apple pip, a speaking rock;
my own slant of winter sun frozen on dry leaf.
Words. We make more words. And words
and words. More words. Words shaped more beautifully
by the change of this word to that one,
but still more words, always only ever only words,
the rhythm fine, a rhyme, maybe slanted: words and yet more words,
words drowning unseen, unheard among the yet still multiplying words.
Previously unpublished, © Rustum Kozain, 2022
- Rustum Kozain is The JRB Poetry Editor. He is the author of This Carting Life (2005) and Groundwork (2012), both of which won the Olive Schreiner Prize, as well as, respectively, the Ingrid Jonker Prize and the Herman Charles Bosman Award. His poetry has been published in translation in French, Indonesian, Italian and Spanish.
