Citatepedia^®.com

On a Close-up of Louis Esterhuizen, on His Verse Novel “die onderwaterweg, ” (The Underwater Way)

So tell me Louis, you start your verse novel
of which the story line is very thin,
with a white man lying drunk and silent in hospital

after trying to commit suicide,
with memories taking him back
to events in his marriage with his white wife

who had been a left wing political activist,
where politics makes the marriage crumble,
rather than interpersonal relationships,

were marriages usually crumble
from a lack of communication
and respect for each other?

Where at times he is impotent,
where at times he gets it right,
where he looses her in consequence of a rebellious march

are cut from her leftwing circle of friends,
where she head over heels in the middle of the road
lift her dress; let her panties hang around her knees

where she has sex with a black freedom fighter
(how realistic this may be)
is pregnant with a child for Azania

while children in rags string along after her,
where they again sleep together
and he does not catch AIDS,

she is slaughtered in a pincher operation
or maybe by canister-shot
(again utterly unrealistic)

after which he buries her
along with her black friends.
On visits by a certain Jabula, fall in love with her,

he changes from white to black,
so much so that he takes a taxi to a hut somewhere,
where she is a labourer on a sugar plantation

where she makes love to him, they give life to a child
and I wonder if you want to draw this story
through to every white Afrikaner?

Especially where the main character in a prayer
to the almighty God wants to know
if the AK-47 and famine
is God’s own way of controlling vermin?

A person can easily come to the conclusion
along with the thirst for heroes for the black struggle
and where you write “morning walk”
set against Ingrid Jonker’s poem of the child,

that you view every Afrikaner,
every white farmer killed on a farm,
as plague or vermin,
that God kills through black people,

if white people do not mix with blacks,
as the main character in your story does?

[After Anthony Delius/References: Louis Esterhuizen, “Die onderwaterweg, ‘n versroman, Human & Rousseau, (1996) Kaapstad. “On a Close-up of Dirk Opperman, on the Jacket of his Komas” by Anthony Delius.]

poem by Gert Strydom
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!