Breyten Breytenbach
South Africa
Breyten Breytenbach This once exiled Afrikaans poetry icon lets his voice and imagery travel a hypnotic dub groove this time using an English tongue.
BIOGRAPHY
The work of Breyten Breytenbach includes numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays, many of whi... More >
Ithaka
Right at the beginningwhen we were still slimwith answers as white as teeth and supple eyes, and you innocent, and my desire a snake mousing for your wrinkled nut -right then and there I wanted to write you a poemAt the time the days were unthinking and nights long enough to dreamTime was for ever.I scrabbled a spray of broad outlines on an envelopeas ever at the outsetthe shadows of one hand's displacementsI wanted to mark you with crossesthe way one flips a coin in the airto conjecture the future,play your body like a fresh instrumentunfolding under my fingersto shudderingly sing of discovery's joys.Thus, more or less, were the trails of the versewhich I could not knot to stanzas of sound.And we lived, we travelled, we bottled the seasons, explored the slits:I squandered the dark dimensionsMy errings put to sea:the envelope as unwritten lettersailed from one land to the otherfrom hand to hand.Sometimes with a sudden dove of thrashingin the throatI discovered it again in a box of old papersin the dark windfilled loft of an evacuated houseand I tried to rememberwhat it was I would have liked to writeright at the beginningwhen we were still lithewith white-toothed answers and a supple eyeBut the handmap had becomethe pale membrane of a testamentscribbled in blotting language,indecipherable like the snakeskinno longer able to unknotthe deployment and pleating of desireor to invent the wholeNow when my end is rising over the horizon with bleached sails -a first and last islandwhere only the blind dog waits in faithI fold this writing in two, woman, and lay it, hidden in the envelopeof a lost beginning, like an unavailable homecomingat your door
