Dikterna beskriver olika rum och upplevelser, från barndom till den vuxnes kärleksmöten.
***
Kobus Moolman föddes 1964, och för närvarande bor han i Pietermaritzburg. Han har publicerat sex enskilda diktsamlingar: Time Like Stone (University of Natal Press, 2000); Feet of the Sky (Brevitas, 2004); Separating the Seas (University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2007); Light and After (Deep South, 2010) and Left Over (Dye Hard Press, 2013). och så boken "A book of rooms" som jag har läst.
The room of wordlessness, by Kobus Moolman
(from A book of rooms. Grahamstown, South Africa : Deep South, [2014].)
There is the smell
of undiluted Dettol that he remembers And ammonia and old
vomit, fresh paint
(Double Velvet - Velvagio) and wet sea-sand A smell that swells
and recedes as his father
slowly moves his head There is the sensation of claustrophobia
smooth aluminium
surfaces, shining needles, clear PVC tubes and sharp sea-spray
There is the thin
sound of wind far-away in the dark hollow of a shell whispering
There is the gargle
of sounds in a hollow language in a putrid mouth without a hint
of his father anywhere
in it There is nowhere for him to look without seeing the thin
body of someone
who used to be his father before his father gave up being anyone
and expected everyone
suddenly to feel sorry for him There is the white uniform of a bed
that carries a weightless
cargo from one reluctant breath to the next There is nothing
So nothing is said Nothing at all Just like that Only the waiting.
***
Jag har läst en väldigt avslöjande recension av boken. Den är skriven av Afric McGlinchey och han klargör relationerna så här:
"Moolman creates setting like a cinematographer or playwright. (He has written several plays.) Many of these poems could be read as stage directions, bringing to mind Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’.
(...) But his father doesn’t come out of this collection at all well, neither does the speaker. One shameful event after another is described in forensic (if oblique) detail, suggesting a self-loathing, particularly in relation to the way he treated his younger brother." (Sabotage Reviews, January 15, 2015.)
Förutom att flödet är svårgenomträngligt är det nästan omöjligt att välja ut några utdrag. Det får bli en modersbild.
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| Kobus Moolman |
***
The room of what is left (extract), by Kobus Moolman
(from A book of rooms. Grahamstown, South Africa : Deep South, [2014].)
There is just
a long crack left in the wall that opens and closes depending on
the weather
There is just a wide window with broken green blinds that faces
straight onto the
past, that runs left to right and back again all day and night every
day Even when
he is not there There is just a bare wooden floor with a hole in
the middle through which
suddenly everything drops There is just his mother, musty as a
wet towel, on her
knees in her blue crimplene dress thinner than a ghost, sweeping
up the fragments of
fifty years in the same leaking house, and packing the pieces into
a cardboard box and
closing the lid and taping it shut and never opening it again Not
even when she gets
to the other side To the Green Wing that smells of urine and
stale photographs
...
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