Synapse
Antjie Krog
Human & Rousseau
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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