Blue mood...thoughts drifting...Ingrid Jonker

Just my mood...not in a mood to say anything today!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ingrid Jonker died by walking into the sea!

To: Ingrid Jonker...Poet...A van Heerden

I see her pain,

I hear her voice

No one understood,

on one looked up

She carried a burden,

She carried herself,

She carried alone

~
Through her words,

Through her thoughts,

Through her lines

Through her phrases
She opened her soul

She opened her heart

She cried out

All on deaf ear
Abandoned

alone confused

loved used

abused
She let them.

~

Their acceptance made her accept,

But she died of that,

inside her soul.

She had too much of this world to carry on…
The water was calling
In her own defence

She gave herself

At her own expense…

~~~~~~~~~~

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This poem is in Afrikaans/English....

Somewhere I have never travelled - Iewers het ek nooit gereis nie

Ingrid Jonker.....adapted by e.e. cummings

+

somewhere I have never travelled,

gladly beyond any experience,

your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which I cannot touch because they are too near

~~~~~

iewers het ek nooit gereis nie daardie groen verte

verby alle herinneringe jou oë dra hul stilte

in jou geringste gebaar is daar iets wat my omsluit

of wat ek nie durf aanraak nie iets te ná

~~~~

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though I have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself

as Spring opens(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

~~~~

jou oë van landskappe sal my maklik blootlê

al het ek my hart gesluit soos twee hande

jy ontvou my keer op keer soos die lente

bedrewe en heimlik haar eerste roos

~~~~

or if your wish be to close me, I and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

~~~~

en as jy my sou verlaat geslote dan

sou my voorhoof sluit mooi en onmiddelik

soos die hart van 'n blom sou droom

van 'n wit sneeu wat alles oral bedek

~~~~

nothing which we are to perceive in this world

equals the power of intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

~~~~

niks wat ons in hierdie wêreld kan versin

ewenaar die krag van jou broosheid die tekstuur

van jou oë tref my die groen van sy veld

een bevestig die ewige en die vir altyd met elke sug

~~~~

(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;

only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

~~~~

ek weet nie wat dit is wat jou laat vou

en ontvou nie ek verstaan net êrens op my reise

die stem van jou oë is dieper as alle rose

nee nie eens die reën nie het sulke hande

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Poem found here: Parnassus ...

The Child

The child is not dead

The child lifts his fists against his mother

Who shouts Africa ! shouts the breath

Of freedom and the veld

In the locations of the cordoned heart

~~~

The child lifts his fists against his father

in the march of the generations

who shouts Africa ! shout the breath

of righteousness and blood

in the streets of his embattled pride

~~~

The child is not dead not at Langa

nor at Nyanga not at Orlando

nor at Sharpeville

nor at the police station at Philippi

where he lies with a bullet through his brain

~~~

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers

on guard with rifles Saracens and batons

the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings

the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers

this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere

the child grown to a man treks through all Africa

the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world

Without a pass

Ingrid Jonker March 1960

(Translation of: "Die Kind" ) Poems now owned by Simone Jonker...daughter of Ingrid