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True, I do write much less poetry in English, but sometimes an English poem wants to be written. Like last night. I was walking home listening to the soundtrack of Spring Awakening when the phrase "good riddance" lodged itself in my mind and just begged to be used in a poem. When I got home I sat down and wrote it in one sitting. (Which of course means that it could probably benefited from more time and editing before I posted it.) Often poems I write in English feel like they want to be translated into Afrikaans, or sometimes an Afrikaans poem calls for an English translation. The "Good Riddance"-poem, which you can read on my poetry blog, has no such ambitions. It is a happy, thoroughly English poem. Well, mostly. It is not a happy-themed poem, so it is not happy in that sense. I mean that the poem is happy to be an exclusively English poem. Also, one of the words I used is quite questionable. It is not a properly established word in the English language, well not in the sense that I use it. It is the word "palateless", meaning "lacking in delicacy of taste", which, upon searching online, I could only find it used in this sense in Merriam-Webster's dictionary, and noted as one of their "unabridged words"; i.e. a very uncommon word. Palateless has become a slightly more common word to describe dentures as palate-less; that is, dentures that do not have an artificial palate (roof of the mouth) part -- not the variation of the word I had in mind.
In July I translated two of my Afrikaans poems into English: a homo-erotic / bisexually themed poem "and I wonder why" and "Percieve", a poem of romantic longing. The latter I also translated into Korean and is currently being edited by a Korean friend. In July I also translated an English poem, A. E. Houseman's "I did not lose my heart on a summer's even" into Afrikaans, and in May I translated those beautiful English lines (189-202) from the final scene of Beaumont and Fletcher's play “Philaster” into Afrikaans.
But since it has been so long for me to write an exclusively English poem I thought it worth announcing here on my main blog. And so it starts, as an angry confession: "If I should lose you, / I say: 'good riddance!' / I've already lost my heart, / what more is there to lose?" But turns into a sad revelation of unrequited love, and how life loses all its wonder and pleasures when one finds oneself in such a state.
2 comments:
Ek verstaan goed hoekom jy so aanklank by Afrikaans vind. Ek wil net byvoeg: maak nie saak in watter taal jy skryf nie; skryf, moet jy skryf. Want jy het verseker die talent!
Ag dankie Boer! Ek waardeur die kompliment!
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