h/t to the appelliefie, or Cape gooseberry.
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Peepholes to the Past
Peepholes (a translation of Loergate, by D J Opperman)
My three daughters hung
at Franskraal*
a washed-up Japanese net
against the bare bricks
of the play hall
on old copper ship’s yard nails
and in the black knotted mesh
they trapped:
a glass bobber, a snake’s cast-off skin,
a sea sandal that screamed with open maw, shells
of ostrich egg, tortoises of land
and sea, urchins and corals, a finch’s nest
and skull of sheep, bishop, seal and gull
and, up against a beam
with thick nylon, tightly
above a wooden reel pulley and bamboo rod,
above my tea chest of bush violet wood
suspended
from the tides when whales
spray-rained and tumble-danced
through the halls of the milk wood trees
a chunk of vertebra
(*Possibly not this place, but it has goose in it. :))
It is nigh impossible to get the flavour of Afrikaans translated into English, especially the gritty brogue of some of it. I only found two of the Comas‘s poems that I could translate …the next one is a somewhat erotic one:
My Gooseberry from Inchanga
It was on New Formosa*
right of the platform
between the railway plots
where serious asters, malvas** and cannas
somewhere from Inchanga, bloomed
but by chance between them
a gooseberry stowed away
oh, my gooseberry
take off your english puff panties
so that I can carefully observe
nestled in the the lacy groin***
the small eggs
oh, my gooseberry
why am I dowsing?
(* where the temperature today is +22 degrees C, not −22 degrees C
**malva…as in marshmallow, not halva as in nutty;
***(groans) what can I say… this is exactly why I cannot write erotica; it makes me snort in an unseemly manner.)
Here, have an appelliefie. I love gooseberries:
