J. M. Coetzee has described Breyten Breytenbach as "able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life." Windcatcher is a collection of Breytenbach's best work in poetry from 1964 to 2006, and includes many poems never before published. There are poems here from Paris in the sixties; poems written in prison, when Breytenbach was jailed in South Africa for seven years for his activities against the apartheid regime; poems of exile from New York in the nineties; poems from Vancouver, from Amsterdam, from Dar es-Salaam. Windcatcher is a remarkable record of a remarkable life and imagination.
it is when night is at its deepest just before morning that the muezzin calls the faithful for they are still asleep and his sad cry drifts over index fingers of minarets rooftops and lovers and flowers and docks his sad cry dawns over city
—from "Dar es-Salaam: Harbor of Peace"
Starched eyes. Torch-blur. A luminous bed. Light that bleeds. Such are the pungent images that shape the poems in this collection by South African poet Breytenbach, whose tough, sharp-hued poetry is (dare we say) compulsive reading.
threat of the sick
For B. Breytenbach
Ladies and gentlemen,
let me introduce you to Breyten Breytenbach,
the thin man in the green sweater; he is pious
and holds and hammers his long-drawn head
to fabricate a poem for you, as for example:
I’m scared to close my eyes I don’t wish to live in the dark and still see what passes the hospitals of Paris are crammed with pale people standing at windows to make obscene gesticulations like the angels in the furnace the streets are flayed and slippery with rain
my eyes are starched they/you will bury me on a day as soaked as this when sods are raw black flesh and wetness snaps and stains leaves and jaded flowers before light can gnaw at them a sky sweats white blood,
but I shall refuse to paint out my eyes
rip off my bony wings the mouth is too intimate not to feel pain put on boots for my funeral so I may hear mud kissing your feetsparrows droop their shiny leaking heads blossom-black on the green sleeves of muttering monk trees
plant me in a hill near a dam with snapdragons let cunning bitter ducks crap cravings on my grave in the rain the souls of crazed women slyly invade cats,
fears and fears and fears with drenched colorless heads and I shall neither hold nor soothe this black tongue?.?.?.
But look, he is harmless. Do have mercy on him
report
I saw couples kissing in doorways turning around with open mouths I walked across bridges and heard people cough below I saw grayheads riding in taxis look through rain-thick windows at buildings no longer there. snow in winter and grapes in the summer but I don’t remember much about it
I saw the midnight sun and birds of all sizes and fish in the water and the southern cross above a peak and cats wearing boots and drunken women and bare trees with blossoms.
snow in the winter and grapes in summer but I don’t remember much about it
I too heard roosters crow and the call of trains and voices in my bed and gods on the roof and I saw dragons in zoos and the beards of friends and smelled the sun.
snow in winter and grapes in summer but I don’t remember much about it death sets in at the feet
One should simply doze off yet they say for 48 hours consciousness will still beat at the steamed-up windows of the skull
like a fish in a basket
or an astronaut in his spacetub beyond control
or a Jew under a pyramid of Jews
or a nigger(lover) in a cell with a prickling of pins that begins in the soles.
Could it be thus?
The giddiness as the floor tilts and a membrane of water draws over trees and a zealous hand embraces the throat more tightly?
And what a farce, this fumbling for pictures.
Last week’s chrysanthemums are already rotten on their stems, the green veins perished rubber tubes,
they who were yakking parrots are now drooping withered wings.
Yesterday’s white carnations stink like slumped old women.
Yesterday’s red roses have a deeper bloom as smothered fists.
People usually die flat on their backs,
feet coldly erect as petrified rabbits or blossoms on a branch,
with a prickling of pins that begins in the soles.
My feet are recalcitrant: I must cajole them,
swaddled in rags, because I’m not yet done,
must still learn how to die,
I must still decide how to make up my mind.
For now I gaze through a mirror into a riddle,
but tomorrow it will be from face to face.
Copyright © 2007, 2002, 1989, 1978 by Breyten Breytenbach
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1.Iron Cow Blues (1964-1975)
2.The Undanced Dance (1975-1982)
3.The Lines Have Fallen Unto Me In Beautiful Places (1983-2006)
Overview
J. M. Coetzee has described Breyten Breytenbach as "able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life." Windcatcher is a collection of Breytenbach's best work in poetry from 1964 to 2006, and includes many poems never before published. There are poems here from Paris in the sixties; poems written in prison, when Breytenbach was jailed in South Africa for seven years for his activities against the apartheid ...