MY SECOND WOMAN
Mi Tokim yu oltaim olkain tings.
I TALK TO YOU ALL THE TIME ALL KIND OF THINGS
Yu tokim mi oltaim olkain tings.
YOU TALK TO ME ALL THE TIME ALL KIND OF THINGS.
Orait, naw, mi laikim mekim puspus long yu.
VERY WELL, NOW, I WANT TO HAVE INTERCOURSE WITH YOU.
Na yu tokim mi oltaim yes na no na maibi.
BUT YOU SAY TO ME ALL THE TIME YES THEN NO THEN MAYBE.
Maski.
OK BY ME.
Naw aitink bainbai mifela no gat taim mifela stapim manki.
BUT I THINK SOON WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR US TO BE MONKEYS.
Oltaim mi hirim hors bilong taim klostu.
ALL THE TIME I HEAR THE HORSE OF TIME NEARBY.
Olsem mifela hariap na mifela mekim bol
THUS WE HURRY AND WE MAKE A BALL
naw mifela troim bol long ayandor bilong laif.
AND WE THROW THE BALL AT IRONDOOR OF LIFE.
Inaf. Olsem mifela no mekim dai san
THAT'S ALL. THUS WE CAN'T STOP THE SUN
yet bainbai
YET SOON
mifela mekim em i-ran.
WE MAKE HIM RUN.
January 17, 1939
This poem, besides being outrageously “over the top” in almost every sense of the word, is also a very good example of how difficult it is to gage the emotional tone of Van-Ooy’s poems. I finally took this one as comic, but it could have also been taken as a serious paraphrase, an exercise. Try paraphrasing Marvell in pidgin yourself and you’ll see how difficult it is to control the emotional tone of Tok Pisin. Take the word end, as in the end of the line, his life ended, etc. The pidgin for end is ars (ass). It’s also the word for bottom. I think you get the idea.
For those not familiar with aborigine symbols and myths, which are constantly worked back and forth in these poems, Dreamtime is the aborigine term for the mythological time of creation when the gods or "ancestors" gave form to the world. For the aborigine, Dreamtime is ever-present in the form of rocks, water holes, trees, animals and other physical phenomena that surround them and that it can be accessed through dreaming. The aborigine, however, is aware of the special nature of that dreaming, and distinguishes it from normal dreaming in much the same way as we sometimes distinguish "lucid" dreams from those we call "normal". The aborigine, however, has no doubts as to their reality: to him Dreamtime is as real, if not more so, than his waking hours.
As a final note, let me say that looking back on these translations, I am a bit awed. However you choose to classify them, these poems deserve a hearing. They have a peculiar magic all their own. You may have discovered that magic already, but if you haven’t and would like one last directive, let me say you will be missing something if both the pidgin and English aren't given equal consideration, for the true poems lie somewhere between the two. And that in the end is what these poems are all about. You can feel both of them becoming something else if you read the pidgin silently with one eye and the English out loud with the other. Pretend you're wearing 3-D glasses and that I've brought you into a particularly enticing garden and left you there for a few moments, alone, wondering, looking up at the leaves.