Poetry from the Low Countries: January 1943 by Remco Campert

Sunday 18 January 2015

January 1943 by Remco Campert

January 1943
for Joeki Broedelet

I walked the cart track
on a sharp winter's day

I was met by my mother
figurine in the distance

The night before I dreamed
that I sailed a little ship

My hand caressed the duckweed
in the glittering ditch

The ship sailed to the other side
and got entangled in the vegetation

I looked up and saw my father
he stuck his arm through the barbed wire

He looked at me imploringly
my father asked me for bread

On that country road, mother
you held me tight in a long embrace

Your eyes were red
your coat reeked of the town

The German by postcard reported
my father he was dead

In Neuegamme, bitter place
there they had murdered him

I felt nothing
but knew that I had to feel something

Looked along my mother's sleeve
to the tempting forest

Only when I could I talked nineteen to the dozen
about what really occupied my mind

The snare I had set
in front of the rabbit hole

The hut I was building
in the tree that nobody knew

Later on I felt pain
that never went away

Which still racks my body
as I write this

Long ago, yet close by
lasting one man's lifetime

20-2-1980

Remco Campert [1929]

Original title: Januari 1943 - From: Raster 15/1980- Tijdschrift in boekvorm, Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam

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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.