Poetry

Sweet Similitude

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Mist Above Bethoeskloof, 5 June 2020. Copyright 2020 Forgotten Fields. All rights reserved.
Were you to turn to the left whilst surveying the scene I photographed last Friday, you would see the easternmost extremity of the Little River Mountain range, the setting for the “Shepherd Girl” and “Skaapwagtertjie” poems.

“Shepherd Girl” and its Afrikaans counterpart, “Skaapwagtertjie”, are complete. Having set myself the task, two weeks ago, of creating greater alignment between the final English and Afrikaans compositions (especially where they were overly dissimilar), I have achieved success.

Now, when the poems are placed side by side, they reflect one another as closely in phrasing and feature as grammar and style allow. Though it took more than sixty additional versions and variations to bring about this symmetry, I consider it time, turmoil and trial well spent.

Poetry Publication Progress (2020-06-09)

A Poet Vindicated

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Mist Above Bethoeskloof, 5 June 2020. Copyright 2020 Forgotten Fields. All rights reserved.
The ridges of the Little River Mountains with a misty mantle. As a girl, my mother watched the family’s sheep beyond the concealed elevation, just left of centre.

Yesterday, I spoke again with my mother about her childhood shepherding days as the very mountain upon which she grazed her flock slowly succumbed to the mist:

“Would you still be up there at this time?”

“By now, I would be home.”

“What time did you descend?”

“I do not know; we did not have watches or clocks.”1

“How fortuitous that you should tell me this! The second stanza in the Afrikaans version of ‘Shepherd Girl’ has the line ‘Van ure onbewus’2—‘Of hours unaware’!”3

For days, I have been vacillating between several versions of the incongruent second stanza in the English and Afrikaans compositions of the poem in question. My most recent gripe was with its line “Of hours unaware”.

It is meant to show that she passed the time in a world of her own, but “Of hours unaware” seemed to me overly hyperbolic: how could she not know what hours were?4

Yesterday’s anecdote revealed that this was in fact the case, vindicating my poetic choice and helping me select the English and Afrikaans stanza versions containing that line as the ones to appear in the final drafts!

  1. My mother watched her stepmother Dot and step-uncle Mike’s sheep which were kept in the latter’s pen atop the mountain. Uncle Mike would crack his whip from far below on the foothills as the signal for her to fold the sheep and return home.
  2. Pronounced [fun eeRuh onbeviss]: [ee] is formed by rounding the mouth as if to say “ooh”, but positioning the tongue to form “eeh” (like the [u] in the French mur); the [R] is trilled (“RRR”) and the [i] like the [uh] in “about”.
  3. I am yet to recite to her the complete Afrikaans poem, but I am happy to report that she was delighted with the English one!
  4. How bizarre the scruples of the poet when working out the implications of his lines!

Stanza Two: What To Do?

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Stanza Two: What To Do?, 24 May 2020. Copyright 2020 Forgotten Fields. All rights reserved.

“Skaapwagtertjie”

As if in lockstep with the development of its completed English counterpart (“Shepherd Girl”), “Skaapwagtertjie”’s second stanza is a challenge. Having reduced the number of versions for the stanza from just over twenty to two strong contenders for the final draft, I have reached an impasse.

Stanza one introduces shepherdess and flock on the mountain, whilst stanza two elaborates upon her solitary hours watching the sheep. The challenge: which of the two stanza versions most evocatively captures the scene in its four (very) short lines. To find the victor ludorum, I can but nitpick!

“Shepherd Girl”

If truth be told, I am still vacillating between—nay, tormented by—my final choices for stanza two in the English poem. In fact, I devoted today to composing six additional versions of the stanza (from which I have extracted three with promise) to assure myself that I have exhausted every variation.

I had hoped that completing the Afrikaans would bring resolution to my concerns about the English version, but it seems there is yet more work to be done on the latter before I can finalise the former. This is primarily due to the fact that I wish to bring the two poems into thematic agreement.

O, Symmetry!

The second stanza is the only one in which they sufficiently diverge (in subject matter) to cause me concern. In spite of my past pronouncements that the two compositions develop independently, my innate desire for uniformity compels me to seek symmetry, and I must attempt to create it!1

It may be that the aforementioned new English second stanza trials produce nothing worthy and I must humbly accept that the current version is my best offering; but, until I am satisfied that I have summoned every poetic ingenuity within my power, I shall not proceed with the Afrikaans.

  1. I am, of course, in the fortunate position that I can so shape both poems that they agree without compromise—the English version informing the Afrikaans and vice versa. This is not one poet translating the work of another, but a poet casting his own composition into another language (a most fascinating exercise).