Today I Went Down.

by Breyten Breytenbach

For Willem.

Breytenbach was an Afrikaner dissident. He fled to Paris, but returned to South Africa on a false passport, was arrested, and jailed. He writes mainly in Afrikaans, and even through the Apartheid era retained a grudging respect from the Afrikaner establishment. His prison memoir, Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, was a standard text for us hangers-on to The Struggle. His poetry is too little known outwith South Africa, and is bloody hard to find on the web. I think this one was written in English. It reads that way.


Today  I Went Down.

today I went down on your body
while windows were thick white eyes
and hearkened the clogged cavities
in the small darkroom of your chest,
hedging an eternity over the aching voice
from your gorgeous throat,
agony and exaltation flow in one divide
if I may make so bold,
your thighs are a loveword your hair
night’s glittering lining of secret disport:
I aimed for the innermost moon
and rent, moved by the syntax and the slow
of sadness and of joy, so
I love you, love you so

when the blinding comes,
the discomposure of silence,
it must be high up the hills
where hundreds of poor
stamp their feet in the dust, and drums
and woman voices like this ululating skyline
gag the final ecstasy