Rustum Kozain
Nació en 1966 en Paarl, Sudáfrica. Estudió durante varios años en la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo; pasó diez meses (1994-1995) en los Estados Unidos de América con una beca Fulbright. Regresó a Sudáfrica y en el Departamento de Inglés en la UCT 1998-2004, enseña en los campos de la literatura, el cine y la cultura popular.
Poesías publicadas en revistas nacionales e internacionales.
Debutó con el libro This Carting Life, publicado en 2005 (Kwela/Snailpress).
Galardonado con el Premio de Poesía Jonker Ingrid.
La mujer que soy
Son entonces tus manos ávidas
en mí las que me rescatan del sueño
solitario donde floto suspendido
entre tú y la tierra y allá afuera
llueve otra vez mi ventana ya disuelta
en las luces del suburbio nada admite
en esta calma muerta más allá
de nuestra respiración nuestros cuerpos
cambian de forma hallan otro espacio
para medir las distancias
desde la lejanía
hasta aquí tus manos ávidas
mías como una cuna mi mano
te sostiene las tuyas
hablan a través del sueño 3 a.m.
y yo escucho acurrucado
en tu pubis mi hombro entre
tus piernas su lenguaje
escucho al cuerpo tu peso
entonces sobre mí la cama que gira
y nosotros dormimos, dormimos, dormimos.
Luego despertamos, despertamos y te vistes,
te vistes y te vas como es preciso. Te vas.
Dejas dejas dejas a la mujer
que lo admito lo dije yo quisiera ser
la mujer que soy entre tus piernas
el hombre que tú quisieras ser
entre las mías ese hombre
que separa mis piernas que me rescata
del sueño ese hombre en que tú
te conviertes, un hombre cuando te vas
y la mujer que soy duerme
todo el día tus manos ávidas
son un lenguaje del sueño
de las 3 a.m. de la lluvia en la ventana
de la mujer que soy, la mujer que
espera, que espera, que se sienta
y espera y se toca ella misma
meciéndose en su propia mano,
esta mujer que soy cómo deseo
que me abraces así. ~
– Versión de Jorge Esquinca
STARS OF STONE
Today the stones I know will nick
our skulls, then knock our souls
from us. It is so. For under stars
that are but burning stone,
we held each other. Named for light,
Nurbibi clung to me, her back
against the flat roof of my house
warding off earth, hanging
under heaven. Face-down,
I gripped her shoulders, smelled
the stone roof through the rug.
Nurbibi may have stared
over my shoulder at the stars,
those burning bits of far-off stone.
And she may have seen four men’s eyes
hanging above us in their own,
unmoving flame. Eyes of stone,
heads shrouded in swathes
of scripture. So I, Turyalai,
am bound. And on my knees.
And Nurbibi, in whose loins I sought
some God, is now almost at one
with earth, buried to her waist
next to me. We wait
for the seekers of God
and their ceremony of the stone.
Men we do not know will come
and let stone speak, first in whispers
then in what they must believe
a chattering of angels
when the crowd erupts and rocks arc
but in parabolas far short
of reaching God, that must return
to earth. Men who do not know us.
Men who cannot know
that even as we wronged my wife,
in union we created God. In come-cries
caught in the throat, we made Him.
And made Him ours, gave Him some voice
even as He was in the still of night
as He is now, inchoate
before the hard and burning stars.
Turyalai and Nurbibi were accused of adultery and
stoned to death by the Taliban in November 1996.
CAPE TOWN, JERUSALEM
Being on the inside is a privilege that is an affliction …Because our interior is always … occupied and interrupted by others …we have developed a technique of speaking through the given, expressing things obliquely and … so mysteriously as to puzzle even ourselves. – Edward W. Said, After the Last Sky
Often now I turn away from things,
from jubilance save that
which from a quiet word
may grant my moment’s wealth:
a home town’s olive orchard
that shivers in dusklight, the pit-pat
as fruit fall free to the ground;
or the homeless manic’s quiet rage at grace
when a shop owner hands him coffee.
Most of all, I walk
so I may reach home and try to know
myself, so I may turn to work.
And turn more from the racial rage
I need still in myself, as I turn
from the stone’s articulate act
and seek the sentence long enough
to house my tribe, even as I know
of neither’s existence. These are
rages which won’t still, which need
thought. But thought fans flames.
And action in killing them
kills the word. Yet
in my silence there is
this rage, still this rage.
So I turn away from things
and read, dip into books;
wait thus for reports
from my race, choose not
speech. But sit in my silence
which broods to myself
myself. A self at least. And wait,
more thinking not of exile from –
whether inside or out –
but exile through; how inside
the very head the tongue
is exiled through itself:
the tongue its own exile.
And I turn more away from things,
preferring solitude and work
to tongue at stories
from their silent insides: like an orphan
who in a new house senses an old taste
and quietly mulls thus a morsel
that brings memory darting
like a wasp in the head,
then withdraws his tongue
from probing. Back to the mute bed,
the civilising cradle of the jaw.
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