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