Exile I
All day, on-off the whole May day through,
a fine drab gauzy rain streams over this mountain’s
weak scree, thin green and blotchy ochre broom
in bloom, right to the first roofs, brick-red
and grey, old gardens bush and older walls a-curve—
The summer comes, a cold-numbed blackbird
without song, comes indolently, faintly trails, snail-paced—
but far from here flame leaves red and light and air
in blazes blue. There glints the rain,
glint hearth-fires, and glint the faintest trifles
that I recall . . .
The summer comes, but it’s toward winter I go.
The ferret
Enough, ferret: be free. For you no more
dead-end runs in the cornered porch, concrete or
marble under claws that have to dig—
long-bodied tunnel-maker, you, yourself,
your tail bushed out from hope against all hope,
brave small anxious self—I told my
other orphaned selves I see you searching
for outlet, warned them to sit dead still
atop the stairs that run down to the wide sea,
so you might turn and fearless fly
past us down the steps: how piercing fine
your fur is—Come, and welcome, and farewell,
and save me in the fynbos, the sand dunes.
Tunnel for me, tunnel: ferret, finally redempt.
Bee from Gingerbeer
The gods don’t always save, Bee.
Consider yourself elect, spooned out in time.
I too understand a fix, even if more
complicatedly dumb or complicatedly smart,
so that I’d be lost even more easily
between hive and nectared calyx.
This too I know: sitting disconcertedly drenched,
degraded and drunk, the hell in: why’s it have to be you?
But here you’re stripping the sticky from feelers
already with miniscule legs, drag yourself droop-winged
awhile, sit again as if you might die—then whir-whir
enraged all around ’til you arch on your
spinning-top sting, a dancer en pointe, with
wonderful improvisations, kneeing and
elbowing armpit and groin, your abdomen hollow
to back, determined so singularly once
more—silk-wool and wax-winged—to fly.
I plead with the breeze: dry her now!
Not in vain, either: here you’re lifted and launched
into space. But no sooner you vanish, a dot,
than you’re back—I throw out the ginger-
beer fast, and hope you’ll learn still: the sweetness
of past times is certainly best, but if you just have
to be “in”, a Something will spoon you out just in time.
from Membrane
Sheila Cussons
translated from the Afrikaans by Andrew van der Vlies
Read the original in Afrikaans
Listen to “Exile I” read in the original Afrikaans by the translator:
Cussons is one of Afrikaans literature’s most celebrated—and enigmatic—poets, beloved of other writers but not widely known outside of the Afrikaans-speaking literary and intellectual community. Her work is marked by linguistic dexterity and arresting metaphorical experimentation, as well as sharp wit. These three poems are from her 1984 collection, Membraan, published in Cape Town by the eminent publishing house Tafelberg, and are representative of the work she produced around the time of her return to South Africa after decades in Europe. They showcase her characteristic mix of confessional lyric (“Exile I”), close observation of the everyday, often rendered with humour and pathos (“Bee from Gingerbeer”), and a mysticism informed by her faith. Cusson’s conversion to Catholicism was unusual for an Afrikaans-language writer, and her poetry frequently performs a turn to the metaphysical that reveals her to be an heir to George Herbert or John Donne as much as to writers closer to home.
The chief challenges for a translation from Afrikaans—as with other Germanic languages—involve decisions about word order and compound words, as well as finding approximations (not necessarily in the same place) for alliteration, assonance, and repeated vowel sounds, and accounting for idiomatic resonances, puns, or productive ambiguities. Afrikaans allows for inventive compound formation (nouns, adjectives, verb-noun compounds like “kort-kort”—literally “short-short” [“Exile I”]) that is neither easily nor concisely rendered in English. Some words can be understood in context as both adjective and noun: in “Exile I”, for example, old gardens are bushy and also move as if overflowing (both suggested by “ruig”), while walls are bent and curve actively (“krom”). There is also the problem of idiom when direct translation to a standard international English is difficult. To be “die joos in” (“Bee from Gingerbeer”), literally “the devil in” (though the etymology is unclear), is to be very upset; “the hell in” is the South African English equivalent, likely a borrowing.
I have made use of italics selectively to indicate Afrikaans words retained to emphasise strangeness or local resonance or because they are generally used in South African English (“fynbos”), or to replicate emphasis, which can be indicated in Afrikaans by acute accents on any vowel (plus “y”). I have chosen not to render precisely the many diminutives of which Afrikaans is so fond, as in “die treetjies”, literally “the small steps” (“The Ferret”).
The chief challenges for a translation from Afrikaans—as with other Germanic languages—involve decisions about word order and compound words, as well as finding approximations (not necessarily in the same place) for alliteration, assonance, and repeated vowel sounds, and accounting for idiomatic resonances, puns, or productive ambiguities. Afrikaans allows for inventive compound formation (nouns, adjectives, verb-noun compounds like “kort-kort”—literally “short-short” [“Exile I”]) that is neither easily nor concisely rendered in English. Some words can be understood in context as both adjective and noun: in “Exile I”, for example, old gardens are bushy and also move as if overflowing (both suggested by “ruig”), while walls are bent and curve actively (“krom”). There is also the problem of idiom when direct translation to a standard international English is difficult. To be “die joos in” (“Bee from Gingerbeer”), literally “the devil in” (though the etymology is unclear), is to be very upset; “the hell in” is the South African English equivalent, likely a borrowing.
I have made use of italics selectively to indicate Afrikaans words retained to emphasise strangeness or local resonance or because they are generally used in South African English (“fynbos”), or to replicate emphasis, which can be indicated in Afrikaans by acute accents on any vowel (plus “y”). I have chosen not to render precisely the many diminutives of which Afrikaans is so fond, as in “die treetjies”, literally “the small steps” (“The Ferret”).
Sheila Cussons was a South African artist and poet. Born in 1922 on the Moravian Mission Station at Piketberg, she completed school in Pretoria and studied fine art at what is now the University of KwaZulu-Natal, before moving to Amsterdam. Her poems began to appear in magazines in South Africa in the 1940s. Her first collection, Plektrum (Plectrum), published in 1970 by Tafelberg, won three important awards: the Ingrid Jonker, Eugène Marais, and W. A. Hofmeyr Prizes. A convert to Catholicism, Cussons lived in Barcelona with her husband for twenty-five years before returning to South Africa in 1983. In the same year, she was awarded Afrikaans literature’s highest accolade, the Hertzog Prize. Cussons died in Cape Town on 25 February 2004. The poems translated here appeared in Cussons’s 1984 volume Membraan, published by Tafelberg, and are reporduced here by kind permission of NB Publishers and the Estate of Sheila Cussons.
Andrew van der Vlies was born and raised in South Africa and educated there and at the University of Oxford. Until recently, he worked at Queen Mary University of London, and he is currently a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Van der Vlies has published widely on South African literatures, print cultures, and gender studies. His recent books include Present Imperfect (Oxford, 2017) and, as editor, Race, Nation, Translation: South African Essays, by Zoë Wicomb (Yale, 2018). Translations of other poems by Cussons have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation and the Denver Quarterly.
