The old horse by Wim de Vries

The old horse I still often think of the old horse, the old horse who laboriously pulled the plough through the fat, heavy clay. No longer hearing the farmer's  curses. I saw him getting older day by day his head bowing lower and lower towards the ground. I saw him once on his free Sunday. He looked at me with two tearful eyes. I caressed his head softly and left the gate wide open.	Wim de Vries [1923-1994]
Original title: 'Het oude paard' - From the collection: 'Zwaar bewolkt, enkele opklaringen', 1980 - Rotterdamse Kunststichting

Depression by Ira Bart

Depression By no means not even words can I say how dazed groping blindly it steals into me and whispers how can I say how I still want what I before when it was still warm and the future hopeful can I still say oh, come back feeling of future in wide open arms.	Ira Bart (Ria Baart) [1947-1996]
Original title: Depressie - From the collection: Verwaaide liefdes, tere vleugels - 1997 - Uitgeverij Tortuca, Rotterdam

1944 by Lizzy Sara May

1944 The week before my mother was fetched from her safehouse I was with her with my little son eleven months old she took him on her lap held him with one hand and with the other put a record on the gramophone will you give a hand? she asked me I played the record my son began to sway you see said my mother he's musical after the war I'll give him music lessons a week later she was locked up in a detention centre and when she was transported to westerbork she wrote me on a scrap of paper I'm alright a year later when we received her possessions we found her calendar changeable cards in a holder it had stopped on the fourteen of April only this card was yellowed

Lizzy Sara May [1918-1988]

Original title: 1944 - From the collection: Grim - 1969 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam

River foreland by Willem van Toorn

River foreland Beneath the dyke cow parsley, hogweed, poppies, thistles, the summer rage of stinging-nettles. The landscape of stories. How bottomless the kolk where you should never swim. An other word for a kolk is an eddy. How immense the mythical pike who lives there and your grandfather, as a boy, already saw before. On that side of the dyke the old man lives alone in a crooked house. During high water he puts the chairs on the kitchen table and takes up residence with his children on this side, until the water has dropped.

Willem van Toorn [1935]

Original title: Uiterwaard - From the collection: Dooltuin - 1995 - Em. Querido's Uitgeverij B.V. - Amsterdam

The portable gramophone from the winter of starvation by Jaap Harten

The portable gramophone from the winter of starvation was the only weapon I had against the Calvinism of my resident aunt who was lamenting the old-fashioned way or browsing in her old bible for to comfort our lads with a edifying word. She read: 'As having nothing, and yet possessing all things' (2 Cor. 6:10) and peeping meanwhile at the stew which my mother had made of beet. 'Strike the hated kraut on his head!' Wilhelmina called via the illegal channel, but we just kept drinking surrogate coffee and our handmaiden screwed the kraut. I had in the attic my mythical world without Wagner or Lohengrin and his swan. I played records of Zarah Leander, bombarded by my aunt, who sometimes caught the sound, into a bass with a bosom. I cycled on a bike with wooden tyres and hummed the forbidden music of the enemy who fell apart in Russia. I did not think about death; I was fourteen and randy. (Original title: 'De koffergrammofoon uit de hongerwinter' - From the collection: 'Wat kan een manser betalen?', 1977 - Uitgeverij Querido, Amsterdam)

Jaap Harten [1930]

In accordance with nature by Hans Kok

In accordance with nature Naturally he was angry when she left him, not because of someone else but, as she said after due consideration: to choose for the lesser grief. Naturally he was deeply sad about so many setbacks, it had been damned difficult with his women and up till now she had been the best. Naturally he was upset, confused, one could even say bewildered, that she, whom he had accounted for  and praised as the very best, left him for nobody else. He knew: she loved me but found me unbearable - and this knowledge was unbearable to me. Also quite naturally after that, drunk in a pub, he spoke venomously to her, cursed and - later he found this unforgivable - hit her. Just as naturally he felt ashamed of himself, shrivelled up, disappeared.

Hans Kok [1939-2003] - selfportrait

Original Title: Volgens de natuur - From the collection: Kort samengevat - 1988 - Uitgeversmaatschappij Ad. Donker, Rotterdam.

A Polish girl standing on a chair by J.B. Charles

A Polish girl standing on a chair for dr. Hans Joseph Maria Globke thirteen years collaborator of Hitler, fourteen years collaborator of Adenauer. Imagine a girl from Poland: she is naked and she is standing on a chair she stands there for almost an hour. And that chair stands before the parade ground and on the parade ground lined up stand the prisoners of Neuengamme. In front of stinking men assigned to hell from all parts of Europe walks a heartily-fed officer up and down like a god with shiny polished boots. Now imagine: once when he passes the chair he aims a wink at the girl who stands naked on the chair and the unimaginable happens: the girl, her wrists tied behind her back, spits in the officer's face! And he, raging, kicks the chair away from under the child and the rope tightens; she hangs: and thousands see her die. And now to the point. This officer is today a judge in Bielefeld, Würzburg, Aachen, Mannheim or Münster. 'This is shameful!' someone here calls out, 'that ss-officer was somebody else! Who now has a nice restaurant in Bremen. That legal man you mean only made the laws or signed the verdicts!' 'Then please excuse my mistake; but the girl on the chair then also spat in the face of the wrong German gent.'

J.B. Charles (W.H. Nagel) [1910-1983]

Original title: Een Pools meisje staande op een stoel - From: Topeka - De gedichten van 1963 tot 1966. Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, 1966.

Autumn on the hill by Hans van den Bos

Autumn on the hill The path, narrowed by ferns and brambles, meanders up the hill and reveals an ever changing view over the river, now partly covered by a blanket of mist On the other side, high above water and mist, a manor house is suspended, as if glued against the rocks. Behind a window, a woman slowly dresses herself, unaware of a viewer, following two little egrets. Early autumnal colours on trees and bushes and the overwhelming smell of fungus. Dead silence, only the call of a blackbird and the clicking of a robin echo through the wood. At the top, after turning the bend a warm southerly wind blows the first leaves off the trees. A village and river reappear slowly out of the mist. In the distance it is raining; on the hill the sun emerges. (Original title: 'Herfst op de heuvel' - From: 'Joyceance'  - 2012 )

The poet and the poem by Rein van de Wetering

The poet and the poem 1. by night he descends into the cellars full of words immerses himself and drinks the floors manifest empty and saturated he comes up and knows the bottom is unattainable 2. he is gasping for breath right in front of his face the characters clam up he stands before the blank poem 3. the poem sinks to the bottom of the stream runs and drowns the words become weak (Original title: 'de dichter en het gedicht' - From the collection: 'Achter de hand', 1978 - Uitgeverij Corrie Zelen, Maasbree)

Rein van de Wetering [1937]

Ode to the Yorkshire Dales by C. Buddingh'

Ode to the Yorkshire Dales Every human being, even the most doubting Thomas, has still some sort of image of paradise: for me it is that piece of England between Ingleton and Leyburn, Grassington and Hawes - when I'm there I almost feel the tendency to think: Yes, the           world must have a divine origin. Which is nonsense, of course: millions of folks would say: what? all those hills, those bare moors? nowhere a nice bit of crumpet. Only silly sheep. what a stuffy, boring, drab loneliness! I would totally waste away within a week here - and           that someone calls a kind of Eden? But talking about gardens of Eden is a bit like love: one blows his brains out for some creature another would not want to be buried with for all the money in the world. When I think of the hordes on the Costa del Sol my           hair stands on end all over again. It remains of course a question of  infantile longings, fears, illusions: even our first three years here also have a lot to answer for - if you are crazy about space and intimacy all at the same time, if you experience a void as panoramic and commotion as a void,           you are ripe for the Yorkshire Dales. Everything there is a bit greyish, dusty, veined with browns and hazy blues, even in spring it already looks a little like autumn, it is an awfully beautiful country, but not pleasant, rather more dour, closed in on itself - a country like a man who never slaps you on the back,           but whom you always can count on. And so it turns out yet again that also in your little paradise you are after all searching for yourself: the picture of an ideal superego, that is kind and obliging to your Id, a sort of father and mother in one, who never leave you - Oh, donkeys of Arncliffe, when shall I see          you grazing on your green again?

Kees Buddingh' [1918-1985]

(Original title: 'Ode aan de Yorkshire Dales' - From the collection 'Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen' - 1978 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij - Amsterdam)

Garden of gluttony by Manuel Kneepkens

Garden of gluttony On cool summer nights when the family noisily dispatched raw herring, followed by asparagus with butter sauce steak, salad, chips, and as desert strawberries, cream, mocha and custard then they heaved, the aunts, like peonies, or gaseous balloons on sticks, on the swell of their giggling in all  their tender bosoms Wagner cooed audibly they drank wine after wine until every head looked like pope pius XII in the Holy Year so pale! then finally uncle after uncle, blind drunk, bade farewell and every aunt's creamy backside rocked away only the night remained, that very old lady that peacock-blue fan before the lonely smile of the universe god of the butterflies, then you slept! the windows open, costly dreams fell prey (Original title: 'Tuin van eetlust' - From: 'Tuin van eetlust', 1976 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam)

Manuel Kneepkens [1942]

About taking off pants by Gerrit Krol

About taking off pants Broadly speaking there are two kinds of pants (a) your own pants, (b) the pants of another. Taking off one's own pants one can have the advantage of being alone. Taking off the pants of another however, one must be with at least two. In that case one can also take off each other's pants (dualism). An important factor is the gender of the participants. If they belong to a different gender they can exchange each other's pants since every gender has its own pants. So although usually the gender is recognizable by the pants it is also recognizable without pants. One continues nevertheless, with or without pants, to belong to the same gender. Normally speaking there are two genders, the male and the female, of which the representatives are recognizable because, once without pants, the male goes into the female. One then says that they fuse with one another. This fusing is temporary. Afterwards the pants are put on again. Fusing with each other, even when one is of a different gender, with pants on is not possible. (Original title: 'Over het uittrekken van een broek' - From the anthology 'De Nederlandse poëzie van de 19de en 20ste eeuw in 1000 en enige gedichten' by Gerrit Komrij, 1983 - Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, Amsterdam)

Gerrit Krol [1934-2013]

Alarm racket by Hanny Michaelis

Alarm racket tears me away without looking back from the warm cocoon of sheets and blankets. The room looks wonderfully liveable thanks to vaguely known clothes on a chair. When I turn around sitting on the edge of my bed a naked man. Seeing his smile I think: the woman who lives here is to be envied. (Original title: 'Wekkerkabaal' - From the anthology 'De Nederlandse poëzie van de 19de en 20ste eeuw in 1000 en enige gedichten' by Gerrit Komrij, 1983 - Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, Amsterdam)

Hanny Michaelis [1922-2007]

Mangan's Bay by Hans van den Bos

Mangan's Bay From Moord a boreen skirts a white cottage hidden by fuchsia and goes down to the rocks  of Mangan's Bay. Swallows skim  along the path, foursome  twitter on a wire. Just before the strand a hen harrier, surrounded by  three angry magpies sits stoical on a paling. The field  above the cottage is full of flowers and shows an immense  view across the bay where gannets  like javelins cut the water. Slowly, the red sun  disappears behind the hills  of East Cork and makes the sky into a sea of flames. Cormorants fly low as black shadows over the ebbing tide to their nocturnal perch in the mouth  of the Blackwater. The lighthouse  gives its first light to a passing tanker and a fishing boat bound for Youghal. (Original title: 'De Baai van Mangan' - published in English in Southword - issue number 8 - New Writing from Ireland - December 2004, The Munster Literature Centre, Cork, Ireland)

Hans van den Bos [1948]

Raincoat I - IV by C. Buddingh'

Raincoat 1 There I am on a snap with Seamus Heaney, end of June last year. Beautiful day. We grin at each other, I the broadest. My raincoat lies on the table in front of me. What a lot we had to talk to each other about: Joyce, Auden, Eliot, there in the beergarden of Lekzicht – Yeats too, of course! – during the yearly poets’ outing of the RKS. He invited us to stay this summer for a week at his home in Dublin, 191 Strand Road. There you look out over Sandymount Beach, where Stephen Dedalus crunched through the shell sand. Seemed great to me. Why don’t I do it?	C. Buddingh' [1918-1985]
Raincoat II It has something to do with that raincoat. I’ve always been like that : fearful – cautious. In particular I just want to be left in peace to stay in my little corner. Perhaps it also has to do with illness: Early on, Doctor Meursing made me wear a cap and long socks in the autumn. Otherwise I got influenza. Or even bronchitis. And I’ll never forget how once, in ‘s-Gravendeel, I was chased by cows in a field (and who can say, they weren’t really bulls?), and only because I wanted to get my ball back. I don’t like to leave my territory. After all it takes eight hours to sail to Harwich.	's-Gravendeel - Voorstraat
Raincoat III I shan’t see very much that way. Not Manhattan. Nor the Gran Chaco. Nor the Khyber Pass. Never see galloping gauchos or camels. It’s all clearly written in that raincoat. Even in the Bankastraat I become restless when I hear loud boys’ voices. I would rather live in a fortress, with yet another double wall. I only need a couple of rooms. But completely my own: where the venom that lurks everywhere, can’t reach me. Stientje, my sons, Sam, Peerke, now and then a couple of visiting friends. I can see it now. The poetry would sky-rocket.	Bankastraat - Dordrecht
Raincoat IV Or quite to the contrary? Yes, quite to the contrary, of course. Your window on the world must be open wide. You can read it all in Shakespeare, but have to visit the sewers yourself too. It’s an inhospitable place, our little planet. But the fact you’ve just been planted there. You simply have to steer a cunning course. Mother’s womb wasn’t that great either. You’re right, Kees II. If I didn’t have you, and both my eyes, right? Okay, let it be rough on the Irish Sea (and that was impressed upon me since I was very young): I promise you: I really will go to Dublin again one day. But then I’ll lug all my raincoats with me.

Original title: 'Regenjas I-IV' - From the collection 'De tweede zestig' - 1979 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij - Amsterdam

Nightfigure by Willem Frederik Hermans

Nightfigure The sun was so strong That I could see nothing but black And white That I measured myself Only with my shadow The sun was so high That I hardly had a shadow And that's why, by day, I'm so small and tired I, who grows only when it gets late. (Original title: 'Nachtgedaante' -from the collection 'Hypnodrome', 1948 - Uitgeverij A.A.M. Stols)

Willem Frederik Hermans [1921-1995]

A Brit by Herman de Coninck

A Brit is somebody who is able to enter a department store, knock and ask: 'I hope I'm not interrupting?' perhaps a Brit does interrupt himself, a British personality must be something like a plank on which you sleep uncomfortably. but it will teach you discipline to keep feelings at a distance, the way you even keep a cigarette at a distance by a (spoken with an English accent, to keep the French language at a distance) port-cigarette. and thereby learning the disdain to be courteous. I still believe that Wellington, when he saw Napoleon's troops at Waterloo, must have said: 'quite interesting'. (Original title: 'Een Brit' -from the collection 'Poëzie is en daad van bevestiging' - Noord- en Zuidnederlandse poëzie van 1945 tot heden - gebundeld en ingeleid door C. Buddingh' en Eddy van Vliet - 1984 - Uitgeverij Manteau Amsterdam)

Herman  de Coninck [1944-1997]