Tuesday 30 December 2014

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

Sunday 28 December 2014

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

Saturday 27 December 2014

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

Wednesday 24 December 2014

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.

Saturday 20 December 2014

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.

Friday 19 December 2014

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 )





Monday 15 December 2014

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]


Sunday 14 December 2014

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]

Wednesday 10 December 2014

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]



Tuesday 9 December 2014

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]