Ingrid Jonker – Selected Poems

/, Blesok no. 118/Ingrid Jonker – Selected Poems

Ingrid Jonker – Selected Poems

THE CHILD WHO WAS SHOT DEAD BY SOLDIERS IN NYANGA
I REPEAT YOU
ESCAPE
DAISIES IN NAMAQUALAND (1963)
PREGNANT WOMAN
I AM WITH THOSE
LITTLE GRAIN OF SAND
BITTER-BERRY DAYBREAK
YOU HAVE TRICKED ME
HUSH NOW, THE DARKLING MAN


DAISIES IN NAMAQUALAND

Why do we still listen
to the answers given by the daisies
to the wind to the sun
what has become of the little kokkewiets

Behind the closed forehead
where perhaps a twig still tumbles
from a drowned springtime
Behind my word killed in action
Behind our divided home
Behind the heart locked against itself
Behind wire fences, camps, locations
Behind the silence where foreign languages
fall like bells at a funeral
Behind our land torn apart

sits the green mantis of the veld
and dazed we still hear
small blue Namaqualand daisy
answering something, believing something, knowing something.

AuthorIngrid Jonker
Translated byZoran Radicheski
2019-01-15T12:05:07+00:00 March 27th, 2018|Categories: Poetry, Blesok no. 118|0 Comments