We are
dekighted to welcome Rustum back to our village. A child of the Winelands, he
grew up in Paarl, before studying English. Aftre travelling to the USA as a
Fullbright Scholar, he returned to lecture at UCT. He has won the Ingrid Jonker
and Olive Schreiner Prizes for Poetry, and insists that writing poetry is a
sincere, necessary matter and no casual affair. His honesty, perceptiveness and
clarity, allied to his skilful use of language make for exhilarating reading.
We are
looking forward to hearing his words once again!
READING HEANEY’S “NERTHUS”
for
S. Ben-Tov
Afternoon
sun of Ohio’s August
daubs the classroom with early rust.
Eight of us bristle, apprenticed
to nail the world to its sentence.
Poet’s poet, our teacher hands us
a copy each of Heaney’s ‘Nerthus’.
A chill creeps in me as she reads.
From Heaney-soil, that concrete dark,
an unseen ash-fork staked in bog:
my first portents of winter north.
*
We have all heard the name
but not Heaney’s Great Chain of Verbs.
We stall. And do not fathom
the quiet mesh of kesh and loaning
that lull and push of middle-voice
that verb say
the long-grained never static
of the poem’s non-finite aesthetic
daubs the classroom with early rust.
Eight of us bristle, apprenticed
to nail the world to its sentence.
Poet’s poet, our teacher hands us
a copy each of Heaney’s ‘Nerthus’.
A chill creeps in me as she reads.
From Heaney-soil, that concrete dark,
an unseen ash-fork staked in bog:
my first portents of winter north.
*
We have all heard the name
but not Heaney’s Great Chain of Verbs.
We stall. And do not fathom
the quiet mesh of kesh and loaning
that lull and push of middle-voice
that verb say
the long-grained never static
of the poem’s non-finite aesthetic
© 2005, Rustum Kozain
From: This Carting Life
From: This Carting Life
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