This is a poem I originally wrote in Afrikaans in September of 2019. I really love this poem, and felt the need to translate it here.
(Original Afrikaans poem
here)
she and her rebellious ribs come lie
under the sweet clement green of the trees
her legs thunder with the relief to be free from chair
her agh-shame-arms just want to sink
into the muscular syntaxis of summer
her wait-a-bit cheeks blush from
the glee in her imagination
her pregnant thumbs can not wait
to bear praise songs over his skin
through the violentless curtains
he sees her groundbreaking breasts
he raises his insane eyebrows
and stands tightly against the cool malva pudding walls
he stumbles towards her
but the table-corners
and cunning dust balls trip him
he keeps peering outside where
the bleeding balloons just do not want to clot
the sky breaks out in pleading purple bruises
the only thing that will save her
is a pyromaniacal pacemaker
maybe then he will start to believe in her heart again
she sees the gloomy guinea fowl
running over the gasping highway
the migrating marionettes do not know where to!
everything feels like velvet confusion
spine-chilling fricatives slip from her mouth
her moody bum eventually gets her sit
as the daring clouds
sail into the reckless darkness
she climbs into the rippling candlelight
and unfolds her words one by one
over the apricot-coloured paper