Poetry from the Low Countries: A Polish girl standing on a chair by J.B. Charles

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.

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Hans van den Bos

was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1948.

In the late Sixties, after National Service, he began working in a bookshop, which he took over after a number of years. The shop, under his direction, became specialised in Literature, Modern Art and Architecture, containing one of the largest collections of poetry in the whole of The Netherlands.

He was invited, in the 1990's, by the former director of Poetry International, the late Martin Mooij, to display his poetry collection on a book stall at the annual festival in Rotterdam. In 1997 he closed the shop and 5 years later emigrated to Ireland, where he is presently busy as a writer and translator of poetry.

Contact: JohannesvandenBos@protonmail.com

Hilary Reynolds

Hilary Reynolds is an English/Dutch classical singer, music teacher and choral conductor, who was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1954.

She studied singing and piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London and, after graduating in 1978, moved to The Netherlands, where she pursued a career as a concert singer and vocal coach. In 2002, she moved to Ireland, together with her husband, Hans van den Bos, where she had been invited by the Head of the Music Department of University College Cork to take up a post there teaching Vocal Studies, Art-Song and Opera.

For a number of years, she has collaborated with Hans van den Bos writing theatre shows and plays and assisted with translations of his own work as well as of other poets, including translations of Russian poetry by Anna Achmatova.