Saturday 31 October 2015

In the garden by Jan Eijkelboom


In the garden

1

In the garden I look up from my book
and see the confidence of bees
entering the flower
of a Himalayan balsam,
now and then bumping into seed-cases
that, silently exploding,
spread their well-aimed black seed.
Insecure I start reading again.

2

I did plant a little tree
when I turned sixty,
hoping that it would get enough light and some air
between the trees that were already there
in a time before I existed.
In its shadow children will not know
who, with spade, manure and water
briefly worked here with the soil.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008
[photographer unknown]

Original title: In de tuin From: 'De wimpers van de dageraad' - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam - 1987

Allotments along the railroad by Jan Eijkelboom


Allotments along the railroad

Everywhere along the track
little gardens like playing cards.

Strange, that I in spring
when they are turned over and raked
while the beanpoles are waiting
against the privy-sized shed
constructed from four old doors
of which one opens-

should think of the dying chrysanthemums,
the withered leaves, the poles
piled up along the edge,
when in the area far and wide, beyond
the narrow ditch, big bonfires
of leaves and stumps burn
and smoke remains itself in a mist
which yet does not prevent the sun
from plating a far-off greenhouse with silver
and closer by staining the reed-

strange, that I then did not think
of how loose and raked
this repeating private domain
would be again soon.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008
[photographer unknown]

Original title: Volkstuintjes langs de spoorbaan From: 'De wimpers van de dageraad' - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam - 1987

Friday 30 October 2015

Helena of Heerlen by Manuel Kneepkens


Helena of Heerlen

Last night I found myself on the patio of the Heesberg Tennis Club
And also she was there, the gold-blond long-legged
who we, grammar-school students full of craving, called Helena....
Friendship, Love were as a dream ought to be....
Only.. now we drank Champagne
no longer orange squash or grenadine
Pupils from the Fifties turned out to be Gods....
Athanatoi with tennis rackets
And, look, the blond hair of the First Lady of Troj
was still as lustrous long as it used to be
and also the same smile coloured her cheeks
In between our Homer books, red-brown jacketed
the hills of the Chalk country looked
like our future, endless jade
How was it possible.... after so many years of the Carboniferous period
united in the dream
on the Olympus of Heesberg's Tennis Court
with Menelaus' wife, Paris' concubine
and soot-fingering Heerlen left for so long...!
Oh, Mining town of my memory
black Hellas
by a marlstone-yellowy sea!

Manuel Kneepkens [1942]
(photo Internet)


Original title: Helena van Heerlen

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Chili by Hans Tentije



Chili

I watched Pablo Neruda's funeral on television, yesterday evening,
kitsch-flowers were showered straight from Macchu Picchu with overwhelming splendour upon his coffin, like orange blossoms
and hundreds of people sang, in Spanish, the International
it was as if he wrote it himself

somewhere in Santiago a man lay on the street shot to bits
under some newspapers
where maybe the false news about Allende's dead was still rustling

a bit later an admiral of the military junta appeared on the screen
to announce that the left-wing terror was over
that the poor would at last be better off

what else could I do, goddamnit
than to wish a slow, wasting copper poisoning upon him
just that and nothing else
but at the same moment, your lines, Neruda, came to my mind,
slovenly, yet still poignant enough:

'I want to meet death together with the poor
who lacked the time to look at him closer
beaten up as they are those who
splendidly divided and allotted the heavens'

Hans Tentije - 1943
[photographer unknown]

Original title: Chili. From: Is dit genoeg een stuk of wat gedichten, deel 1 - Elsevier Manteau, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, 1982.

Monday 26 October 2015

Dordrecht's museum garden by Jan Eijkelboom


Dordrecht's museum garden

When I am dead
in the garden of this museum
above the tangled noise of the leaves
a blackbird will sing just as clearly
on just such a late spring day.

And I, I shall be there no more
to forget with this singing
that I have to die in due course.

But on the other hand I shall
-you never know-
live much longer than that bird.
And anyhow when I lie six foot under
then my son shall once again hear
a blackbird sound just so
on just such a late spring day.
And he will know who I was
and oh, a bird knows nothing.

But on the other hand again:
if blackbirds could think about their fathers,
then they might croak like a raven.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008
[photographer unknown]

Original title: Tuin Dordrechts museum - From: Wat blijft komt nooit terug - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam, 1979.

Land of hills and horseshoes by H.J. Mesterom



Land of hills and horseshoes 

Land of hills and horseshoes.
Superstition on the farms
and in the trees,
rustling like rain or an endlessly
played gramophone record.
Once one afternoon a scarecrow snared me
when I stole apples
in the strongly stirring orchard
that made me breathless.
Or I spied in the middle of a warm field
upon the golden bed in which the wind
had slept like a giantess
and thought that the sun had set for punishment.



Wind
Droom van een bewogen foto
nagestaard door pauwenogen
*
Text by H.J. (Harry) Mesterom  
on the wall of a private house,
Volderstraatje-Verwersstraat,
's Hertogenbosch
Original title: 'Land van heuvels en hoefijzers' - From: Maatstaf 4, julinummer 1966 - Uitgeverij Daamen NV, Den Haag