farouk asvat : poems: June 2012

26 June 2012

THESE WARS WITH WINTER NIGHTS

THESE WARS WITH WINTER NIGHTS

These wars with winter nights

Are over now,

Beside your supple body

Enveloping me

In a determined embrace

And yet

We loose so many moons

Denying each other,

Uncertain,

Uncertainties heaped upon uncertainties

Like sand rising upon sand

I should not let you go

I whisper to the empty room

Banging my fist against

The cruel whims of fate

That led an army of passion

Against her inarticulate silence

On those cold summer nights

So now,

She too is away

So far away

From where I knew her once

Like a petal falling in the night

Like thunder frightening me

In the comfort of the afternoon

Grey with rain

I recall you coming,

Wave upon wave,

Wiping out memory

Leaving fresh sand

And tiny breathing spaces for life

Like she came,

Wave upon wave,

Building an architecture

From kaleidoscopes of colour

Misty nights and burning flesh,

Nights that calmed down

In her troubled embrace

So come

And go

To whatever darkness you dwell in

To whatever mysteries trouble you,

Or fill my uncertain hours

With more uncertainty,

Your deep-throat'd laughter

Filling the world with masks,

My life with emptiness

So go

And come

And I will fill your troubled soul

With the certainty of my embrace:

Come,

And I will fill your brittle vase

With dewy breaths of flowers

Tied in happy ribbons

Jingling like trees

Full of blossoms

Celebrating life

Even though I know

You too will leave,

Leaving me dangling

Like a wounded bird

Shattered against the tree

composed: 1985 [Johannesburg, South Africa under apartheid]

[] Acknowledgements:

These Wars With Winter Nights was previously published in:

A Celebration Of Flames (donker, p53, 1987);

A Celebration of Flames (Heller Fund, UC Berkeley, California, p45, 1988);

Matatu 5(3) (Göttingen, Germany, p11, 1989);

Deze Oorlogen Bij Winternacht: Dutch translation by Irene Scheltes (1989);

A Celebration Of Flames (piquant publications, p66, 2007);

www.faroukasvat-poems.blogspot.com (26.06.2012);

A Celebration Of Flames (kindle, 2014);

A Celebration Of Flames (amazon paperback, p65, 2014).

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the NOVEL Sadness In The House Of Love by Farouk Asvat

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Farouk Asvat asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, or transmitted in any form or any means whatsoever, mechanical or electronic, including recording, printing, photocopying, or via any computerised means or media, including the internet. This publication shall also not be stored in a retrieval system. And the writing shall not be sold, lent, hired, resold or circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published,

without the prior permission of the author in writing.

Permission to publish or reproduce the writings in any format can be obtained from the author.

Reproduction of this work without permission, except for scholarly & nonprofit purposes,

is liable to a payment of 10, 000 ren men bi or US$ 1,500.

farouk asvat can be contacted at: farouk.asvat@gmail.com

[] please check out my blogs @:

poems: www.faroukasvat-poems.blogspot.com

weapons of words: www.faroukasvat-viewpoint.blogspot.com

piquante: www.faroukasvat-piquant.blogspot.com

piqued: www.faroukasvat-piqued.blogspot.com

books by farouk asvat: www.faroukasvat-books.blogspot.com

[] also link up on:

google+: www.google.com/+faroukasvat

linkedin: www.linkedin.com/farouk-asvat

facebook: www.facebook.com/faroukasvat

youtube: www.youtube.com/c/faroukasvat

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amazon kindle author @ www.amazon.com/author/faroukasvat

_______________________________________________________

DEZE OORLOGEN BIJ WINTERNACHT

Dutch translation by © Irene Scheltes

Deze oorlogen bij winternacht

Zijn nu voorbij,

Naast je soepel lichaam

Dat zich rond mij wikkelt

In een stevige omhelzing

En toch,

We verliezen zovele manen

Elkander loochenend,

Onzeker

Onzekerheden opgehoopt

Zoals zand bovenop zand;

Ik had je niet moeten laten gaan

Fluister ik tot de lege kamer

Mijn vuisten ballend tegen

De wrede grillen van het lot

Dat een leger van hartstocht leidde

Tegen haar sprakeloos zwijgen

In die zomernachten vol kou

Dus nu,

Is ook zij verdwenen,

Zo ver hiervandaan

Vanwaar ik haar ooit kende

Als een bloemblad vallend in de nacht

Als onweer dat me angst aanjoeg

In de weelde van de middag

Grij s van de regen

Ik roep je komst op

Golf-na-golf,

Veeg herinnering uit

Laat vers zand achter

En minieme adempauzes om te leven

Zoals zij kwam,

Golf-na-golf,

Een bouwwerk scheppend

Van kaleidoscopen

Nevelige nachten en brandend vlees

Nachten die tot kalmte kwamen

In haar omhelzing

Dus kom

En ga nu

In wat voor duisternis je ook woont

Wat voor mysteries je ook mogen kwellen

Of vul mijn onzekere uren

Met meer onzekerheid

Je lach diep in je keel

Die de wereld met maskers vult

Mijn leven met leegte

Ga dus

En kom,

En ik vul je gekwelde ziel

Met de zekerheid van mijn omhelzing:

Kom, en ik zal je broze vaas vullen

Met bedauwde adem van bloemen

Met vrolijke linten gebonden

Rinkelend als bomen

Vol bloesem

Loftuiging op het leven

Zelfs a1 weet ik dat

Ook jij mij zult verlaten

Verlaten terwijl ik bengel

Als een gevende vogel

Te pletter gevlogen tegen de boom

Dutch translation by kind permission of © Irene Scheltes

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

the NOVEL Sadness In The House Of Love by Farouk Asvat

is now available on amazon: paperback @ $15 & kindle @ only $5

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

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19 June 2012

THESE DUSTY YEARS

THESE DUSTY YEARS

We burn ourselves

In dancing effigies

Of our own desires

In the shadow of a soldier

Around ululating carousels

Where rusted braziers burn

Into cold ashen streets

Where the smell of white smoke

And bluegums burning

Mingle with the grotesque dance

Of ebony children

Burning

In the embrace

Of writhing skeletons

In a celebration of yellow carnations

And red flames

We devour souls

In one cold swoop

Of determined rhetoric

As we live on dreams

Poltergeists

In the guise of revolutionaries

From Tigani to 'Thekwini the lands are dry.

And the rain is in my heart.

The rain is in my heart:

Pienaarsrivier is an undulating snake, crack-skinned,

Where the highveld grass is aflame with dryness;

In Khuma a bullet-riddled corpse

Lies in a broken, bullet-ridden coffin;

In Zinyoka Biko walks amongst the hungry,

And Alexandra smells of fresh shit,

Sewerage flowing between the toes of children;

In Matlosana mohair veld sways in the breeze

Amidst the burning matchbox houses of Joubertina;

While Gauteng spits its bloody lungs out,

Crossroads celebrates its charred skeletons

Of burning shacks and broken hovels;

In Mgungundlovu poverty stalks

Like a hungry lion seeking children for heaven,

Even as Mandela paces in his sickly cell:

For here death is a constant song:

We have learnt that.

There is no patience

In our patience;

Life attacks

Like teargas

As if batons are stopped

By crunched skulls

As if you didn't know

Death sleeps here

Creeping up like a reality of ghosts

Here, amidst this pilgrimage and exile,

This promise of the fair

The foulest stench of sewers

This taste of blood and teargas

This muscle and air of my body

This city promising gold

Smelling of homebrew

Here, there are no afternoon rains

To cool the mind;

Heatwaves of desire

And shattered dreams of hope

Spiral up from the steaming tarmac

As pedestrians emerge from shops

Like whores after a raid

Weighed down by life:

For our lives are precarious,

And precariously

We hold on

To so many lives,

Shattered,

Poised between laughter and death

The tension of living

And dying within,

Exiles on the periphery of death

Learning

With hardened sensitivities

That there's always

Another side to a story,

That friends,

Like laughter,

Come knocking,

Like death,

On your skull

In a carousel of dreams

In a celebration of slogans

The rain is in my heart.

composed: 1985 [Johannesburg, South Africa under apartheid]

[] Acknowledgements:

These Dusty Years was previously published in:

A Celebration Of Flames (donker, p57, 1987);

Dokumente Texte und Tendenzen VIII (Evangelische Akademie, Germany, p104, 1987);

Matatu 3(4) ed G Davis, M Manaka (Göttingen, Germany, p190, 1988);

A Celebration of Flames (Heller Fund, UC Berkeley, USA, p48, 1988);

Deze Stoffige Jaren: Dutch translation by Irene Scheltes (1989);

African Literature In The Eighties (Matatu 10), ed D Riemenschneider, F Schulze-Engler,

(Rodopi, Amsterdam, Netherlands & Atlanta, p`, 1993);

A Celebration Of Flames (piquant publications, p88, 2007);

www.faroukasvat-poems.blogspot.com (19.06.2012);

A Celebration Of Flames (kindle, 2014);

A Celebration Of Flames (amazon paperback, p86, 2014).