Synapse. Antjie Krog

      

      Synapse

      Antjie Krog

      Human & Rousseau

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THE YARD

      the yard

      yard2 n.

      1. the ground that immediately adjoins or surrounds a house, public building, etc. 2. a

       courtyard. 3. an outdoor enclosure for exercise, as by students or inmates. 4. an outdoor

       space surrounded by a group of buildings, as on a college campus. 5. an enclosure for livestock. 6. an enclosure within which any work or business is carried on (often used in combination): a lumberyard. 7. an outside area used for storage, assembly, etc. 8. a system of parallel tracks, crossovers, switches, etc. where rail cars are made up into trains and where rolling stock is kept when not in use or when awaiting repairs. 9. the winter pasture or browsing ground of moose and deer. — v.t. 10. to put into, enclose or store in a yard.

       [bef. 900: ME yerd, OE geard enclosure, c. OS gard, OHG gart, ON garthr, Go gards;

       akin to L hortus garden, OIr gort sowed field; cf. garden]

      Source: Random House Webster’s College Dictionary ([1991] 1995, p. 1544)

      If I’m a man,

      then I must have a farm;

      and if I have a farm,

      then I must have a wife;

      and if I have a wife,

      then I must have a child;

      and if I have a child,

      then I must have a maid;

      fragments: Anonymous

      Woof – it’s Japhta’s soft bark,

      he’s startled out of his slumber,

      for there at the wall the gate

      made its little squeaking sound

      and slowly across the yard

      a wanderer walks up the path.

      Jan FE Celliers

      She tells the winds of the dance

      and invites them to come, for the yard is wide and the wedding grand.

       Eugène Marais

      the whole yard is filled with him:

      there where the ploughs glimmer,

      I see the ox-great shadow stir

      and hear some iron thing murmur.

      NP van Wyk Louw

      1.

      ‘I want a grave from which to turn away’

      the hearse comes slowly through the frostwhite winter veld

      inside the pine coffin bobs my father’s sons

      and grandsons handkerchiefs around their hands

      lift the coffin with ropes and carry it to the grave

      that took three days to chisel out of

      dolerite an icy south wind cuts

      our song: Nearer, nearer

      my brothers cry as if torn apart death

      suddenly shoves us in the back O Lord thou hast searched me

      and known me freshly shorn a sheepskin falls

      over the coffin the minister reads

      the Old Translation as my mother ordered

      lay your hand part of what I am how I belong is sinking

      into this merciless stone ground. forever gone

      the goshawk’s being the lonely intimate gardener

      of my skeleton against the concept ‘Pa’ the verges

      of death scrabble his coffin grates past iron slopes

      as his life was so his death his bewildered

      offspring stand where we feel we don’t belong

      sustained by natal ground in which we have bloomed

      for generations no one could confirm our place wounded

      we remain scheming suffocating with reproach un-

      charitably we tread mythological water a silence spreads

      over us and the brown willow branches swaying

      in the icily shimmering Free State light it’s as if

      a sighing thing pours from us from our Afrikaner

      conscience our languageness our whiteness

      apprehensive bold a resigned dilapidation

      inconsolable is our incapacity with heads bowed we

      pray while my mother’s dry and determined eyes demand:

      ‘make sure that you cover him yourselves’ carefully my brothers scatter

      a bag of river sand over the coffin I see Hendrik Nakedi in

      one of Pa’s old corduroy jackets coming forward

      there’s earth in his calloused hand: ‘you’re leaving me Matjama’

      he whispers and then groans as if bursting

      into the darkness of death: ‘tsamaya hantle Ntate Moholo!’

      brothers-in-law sons-in-law grandsons nephews start covering the grave

      but it’s hard work and none of them is at home with a spade

      my brother raises his head to catch his breath a black

      man stretches out his hand it’s Kapi Pa’s tractor driver

      my brother looks at him for a few seconds and

      hands over the spade my mother’s weeping becomes audible

      we wanted to be with him when he was taken from us

      deep in the night alone and as always without

      disrupting anything light as a prayer whole and humble

      as a feather but while he perhaps delicately etched arrives

      between ancestors and stardust we hesitate awk-

      ward in our concern as ever shy before his

      gentleness his palms on our shoulders through the years

      he restored us calmly with stories

      that he ploughed open family trees that he kept

      in order he was our hold-onto man our maker of

      peace our go-between our thin-skinned antelope heart

      the unnoticed clasp of our family belt

      he’s gone and how loosely we’re drifting already whatever

      we wanted each sorrowful word

      each forgiveness each gesture of love that we wanted

      to offer is too late jesus Pa send something anything

      that says you do feel it: the adamantly unstaunchable

      keelhauling nature of grief

      2.

      after her husband was buried

      great-greatgrandmother