from Habitus

Radna Fabias

the laying on of hands

it’s hot again
sister rita has done her best, but it won’t cool off—
(the a/c blows warm air on the overheated women)
the church is heaven’s waiting room
that bodes well

the lady in front of me is wearing a feather hat
(under the hat a wig)
the Holy Spirit just knocked her down
(the hat slid off her head)
i keep my eyes on the wig
(she’s lying in front of the dais, speaking in tongues)

this is the church brother george built

the fallen lady shivers as if winter exists here
she jerks
(porn for god-fearing women)
 
all the widows spinsters discontinued brides in heat now lying
next to each other as the new front row
(their wigs their hats)
two pairs of dented ovaries drape blankets over the ladies’ lower bodies and their tears
(they jerk pant writhe some cry out)
 
brother george has run his hand over the glowing body parts of at least three women
(yet we only honor the church he built)
 
in heaven’s waiting room we keep our legs pressed tightly together
(me too, Father, me too)
nobody is obsessed with the flesh of all the men who have ever preached here
(and definitely not me, Lord, not me)

brother george pulls it out and it is holy because Christ
too was made flesh and He bore it with dignity




only the final frame is black
 
my double wears a uniform of sweats
first she’s a playground
then a harpoon
 
in this scene my double’s waiting for the money
she looks at her phone
her credit has run out
 
in this scene she meets
the blond boy with the scooter
she follows the loose cannon
through the revolving door

in this scene she has
a soft spot for the dealer
tenderly she strokes
the tattooed tears on his cheek
 
in this scene my double is hopeful
she has another baby
she buys a pit bull
 
in this scene my double’s a little heavy
she wears a gold name necklace
to five different temp agencies
 
in this scene she’s in a waiting room
she looks humble, meek
an official takes her to task
 
in this scene my double buys sneakers
she lets her shoulders slump
she hides the mail
 
in this scene my double gets a ticket
she wears a mask in this scene
i come on




i seek you in the city
 
first i seek your body in the city
i don’t find it of course but i’m not in a hurry so
patiently i unscrew body parts from passers-by and quietly use them
to assemble yours
i manage pretty well
i only need the color

i seek your color in the old brick paving of a dead, crowded street
i seek you in the polished rails the train glides over
i seek you in crow charcoal asphalt and everything black
between 7 and 8 in the morning i find you on the skin of the electric wires over the entire city
i go up on tiptoes but still can’t reach
 
you are in the hair of the woman crying in church, the beards of pious men, the soles of the shoes of the girl in the grass, the window frames of the old building where a bride is posing for a photographer
i find you in bark tree trunks rocks and the sand at three different locations in my country of birth but customs won’t let me take your color back
 
i find you by the sea on the piles under the pier of course
i find you by the sea
first on the wing of a hungry gull
then i find you
above the sea
in the night that falls
to be like you




roosting tree

on my way to the roosting tree
i water and manure one square mile of reddish-brown earth
it is an altruistic investment i’m making it
possible for someone else to put down roots expand disrupt the ecosystem
then i give my hands a good scrub
—long and painstaking—
i peel the prints from my fingers
—careful        i am careful—

i cut my hair because i am a victim
i dye my hair because i am a villain
i cultivate a moustache to match my forged documents
—i am calm        i am calm—

i fly the boeing through the turbulence in retrospect
to the man who casually and unintentionally begot me
i take a hostage, introduce him on arrival saying
this man reminds me of you i don’t want him we need to talk it’s tragic
that i am going to wear him
and i will wear him
i will wear him like a bearskin
like a cloak his skin
smells of desert heat fenugreek and open wounds

i am taking my mother back to the barren land because i love her
for the love of my mother i give all my kin back to the earth
i cast off my cloak because i love my mother
because i love my mother i ward off repetition from my clamped ovaries

my clamped ovaries are clean
my clamped ovaries are magnificent
my clamped ovaries are made of reactive metals

this is where i roost
i rust
i rest here
it ends here

translated from the Dutch by David Colmer



Habitus, from which these poems are taken, will be released in 2021 by Deep Vellum / Phoneme Media.

Read the original in Dutch

Radna Fabias made an explosive entry into the Dutch poetry world with Habitus, her first collection, in February 2018. The book has been enormously successful, winning a swathe of prizes and going through numerous reprints. This is no mere hype, but recognition of a powerful, poetic voice that takes the reader from the Caribbean island of Curaçao to the immigrant experience of the Netherlands, exploring issues of racism, neo-colonialism, poverty, and sexual exploitation, all with a highly original pulse, anger, and compassion.

As a translator, I was very happy when Fabias and her publishers asked me to translate the book. Working on it is a rare privilege, not just because of its quality, but also because of the close collaboration with the poet that helps push the translations one step further. Rather than demanding that the English always be anchored firmly in the original Dutch, Fabias is alert to the gifts a new language offers, and aware that some limitations demand radical solutions.

Fabias likes to use enjambment to defer a line of thought and suggest an alternative interpretation. As the points where this is possible seldom coincide in two languages, translation becomes an opportunity to reconfigure a poem. But if this is done too extensively or reflexively, the poem might lose its underlying structure and become too chaotic. Discussing “only the final frame is black,” I felt the need to push back against the experimentation to maintain the structural repetitions that contribute so much to the poem’s impact.

Collaboration with the poet can also empower the translator. In Dutch, “the laying on of hands” ends with a striking play on the word “kruis,” which means “cross,” but also “crotch” in the sense of “privates.” I first tried to capture the meaning by translating the line as “brother george presses the flesh of his loins and it is holy because Jesus/too was made flesh and He bore His Cross with dignity,” but after Fabias told me that she would like it to be more shocking, crasser even, I rejigged the line as “brother george pulls it out and it is holy because Christ / too was made flesh and He bore it with dignity,” letting English’s euphemistic “it” shoulder the blasphemous burden of the Dutch pun. Changing “Jesus” to “Christ” so the enjambment lets it come out as a curse was a brainwave that struck on the phone during our conversation.

Radna Fabias was born on the Caribbean island of Curaçao and moved to the Netherlands to study at the age of seventeen. Her first collection of poetry, Habitus (De Arbeidespers), was published in 2018 to universal acclaim and went on to win an unprecedented five Dutch and Belgian poetry prizes. Habitus has been translated into French and will be published in English by Deep Vellum / Phoneme in 2021. An Italian edition is also in production.

David Colmer is an Australian writer, editor, and translator, mainly of Dutch-language literature. He translates in a range of genres and has won many prizes, including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013 (both with novelist Gerbrand Bakker). In 2021, he was awarded the James Brockway Prize for his body of work as a translator of Dutch poetry. His most recent publications are poet Radna Fabias’s trailblazing first collection Habitus (Deep Vellum, 2021) and Willem Frederik Hermans’s novel A Guardian Angel Recalls (Archipelago/Pushkin, 2021).