The Ghosts of the forest by Hans van den Bos

Dylan [2004-2018]
Canus domesticus sapiens

 Original title: Schimmen van het bos

The Ghosts of the Forest

                                     as told to me by Dylan our dog

Often I heard strange noises 

between the dark trees, during my daily walks

on the hills around my home town.

It gave me a shock every time. There was

no smell and I never saw any creature.

My mother, a believer in the goddog 'Lupus',

used to tell me and my two brothers stories

about dogs with wings, spirits

of evil hounds, holy bitches, and the like.

I clearly remember a story

about a enormous hound with red eyes,

somewhere in a town called Baskerville.

Because of all those stories, I was always afraid

to go outside on my own in the dark

and I had often bad dreams about it.

Is there more in this world than I can see?

Now more than 8 years old,

Thomas, one of my brothers,

and I have a house and garden of our own.

We have two attendants, a human male

and female, who have their rooms upstairs.

They are very intelligent and often have

discussions about all kinds of interesting subjects.

They can talk to each other for hours.

Listening to them, while I'm resting

in my basket, I know now that

my mother's stories were just stories,

because there is no truth to them at all.

She was possibly indoctrinated by her Setteric family

and I think that the humans around her

were not very helpful either.

I heard that our father, a secular Sheeper,

had a kind of a scientific education,

but he had to leave our mother

before we were born, so he could not inform us

about the natural world.

One day, a few months ago,

on a walk with our male attendant,

we heard the noise again

and all three of us looked

in the direction from where it was coming.

'Look over there', our attendant said,

'two jays, what beautiful birds they are!'

You see, now I know what the noise was.

So if you keep your eyes, ears and nose wide open,

than you can learn a lot about the real things.

Other animals than Homo can be sapiens too,

you know!`

In memoriam Pablo Neruda by C. Buddingh'

(Original title: In memoriam Pablo Neruda - 
from: ‘Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen’ – 1978 – 

C. Buddingh'
[1918-1985]

Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam.)

In Memoriam Pablo Neruda

 
You know, Pablo, perhaps the most precious thing I possess
   —aside from wife and sons, of course—
is that little book about you in the series Poète d’aujourd’hui,
which you gave me three years ago in Rotterdam,
with the dedication: ‘de Pablo Neruda a su amigo
         C. Buddingh’— well, real friends, of course
we barely became in those five days,
and yet we almost swapped ties: yours
a plain red one, mine a Liberty print.
you practically put the idea into my head,
but I was too shy to go along with it:
   you were one of my heroes, and that I could simply
   talk to you and drink a whisky in your room
was already so unbelievable
   that I crawled further and further into that very shell
   that you were trying to pull me out of.
 
People often asked what you looked like now, and I'd say:
   ‘A gentleman in a cap,’ and that was true enough,
but then ‘gentleman’ in the true sense of an aristocrat:
you are, together with Mazizi Kunene, I believe, the only
person that I've ever seen with the real allure of a monarch,
         and actually that had little to do,
however monumental, with your poethood:
you only had to open your mouth, when there was a discussion
and everyone listened—and not
because you were a more powerful magician with language
than anyone else, or an ambassador in Paris, no, they listened
   because you spoke not only for an entire continent,
   but for every disadvantaged person in the world:
yours was the conscience that each of us so much
   wanted to have, but couldn't, or didn't dare—and for that
   alone you were the greatest of us all.
 
We knew you were ill: cancer, and that we would probably
   never see you again, but you acted and fought
as if all eternity still lay before you.
When you left, you said, ‘see you’, but two years later,
your friend Allende was murdered and your house plundered
         within an hour of your death by the same
mob that had previously chased you out of your country,
the Chile that you gave history and stature
and that now became the measure for what true virtue is: either you are
pro-Neruda, and then you would rather starve
than engage with slaughterers in tailored suits,
   or anti: there is no middle ground,
   and believe me: one day, maybe
not they themselves, but their descendants will pay
   for what the hired assassins’ hands
   have inflicted in that land of your dreams.
 
Yes, you preached revolution, but also and above all,
   love and awe for everything life
had to offer humanity: beauty, art, companionship:
you no longer had to look for the philosopher's stone,
because every rock or pebble you found
         on a beach or in mountain ravines
seemed to you a greater miracle than raising the dead,
or walking on water, and an onion had for you
the same ranking as a solar system:
wherever you looked you saw a Garden of Eden,
only: behind every Adam and Eve stood
   almost everywhere a man with a whip, who therefore
   had to disappear first, and then life
would become as simple as the colour red—and hatred
   you had to feel, yes, but never foster, because
   it was that which precisely kept blocking future's path.
 
If there was anything you weren’t, it was dogmatic, if there was something
   you didn’t want, well then: as little for everyone:
no, you thought that even for the poorest farmer or stonemason,
even the best would scarcely be good enough,
for you the entire human race was a race of kings,
         that’s why you steadfastly stood up for them,
they had not only to throw off their chains, that would be
wonderful of course, but only a beginning, the moment
when true life could finally make a start,
and every shit-shoveler or whore be crowned with gold.
That was your dream, for which you kept fighting and fighting,
   and I know for sure that even in the hour of your death,
   you continued to believe in that day when all the rejected,
displaced, downtrodden, vilified, hunted—and without
   Jesus or anyone else descending — will
   inherit paradise here on earth.

Alpine Hunter's Song by Paul van Ostaijen

(Original title: Alpenjagerslied - from: De spiegel van de Nederlandse poëzie, dichters van de twintigste eeuw - 
samenstelling: Hans Warren - 1989 - Uitgeverij Meulenhoff, Amsterdam.) 

Paul van Ostaijen
[1896-1928]

Alpine Hunter's Song

                         For E. du Perron

A gent descends the street
a gent mounts the street
two gents descend and mount
that is one gent descends
and the other gent mounts

right in front of the shop of Hinderickx and Winderickx
right in front of the shop of Hinderickx and Winderickx
                                                          of the famous hatters
they meet each other
one gent takes his top hat in his right hand
the other gent takes his top hat in his left hand
then the one and the other gent go
the right and the left the mounting and the descending
the right one who descends
the left one who mounts
then both gents left
each with his own top hat his own top hat his bloody
                                                                     own top hat
passing each other
right in front of the door
of the shop
of Hinderickx and Winderickx
of the famous hatters
then both gents put
the right and the left, the mounting and the descending
once past each other
their top hats back on their heads
you heard it right
 
each puts his own hat on his own head
that is their right
that is the right of these two gents

Ode to Dordrecht by C. Buddingh'

(Original title: Ode aan Dordrecht - from: ‘Het houdt op met zachtjes regenen’ – 1978 –

Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam.)
 

C. Buddingh'
[1918-1985]

Ode to Dordrecht

Dordt – what can I say: I was born there

and have lived there now, with the exception of a few interruptions,

for about fifty-six years: then you really don't know any better:

   Bankastraat, Voorstraat, Bagijnhof, Kromhout,

same houses, same people, same trees, same shops: K. Schippers

    wrote in a poem entitled Bij Loosdrecht:

                ‘If this were Ireland

I would look more closely.’ The nice thing, I think, about Dordt

                is that I don't have

to look at all anymore, but can simply think of everything

     that comes to mind: the city doesn't bother me,

             just as I, I hope, don't bother the city:

             we are like two good neighbors

     who nod benevolently at each other, sometimes have

 a quick chat, but otherwise go each their own way.

At least, that's what you'd thought, but it's not like that: what

you experience when you're still in your warm knickerbockers

it doesn't leave you cold – you might

    wish that it did: Dordt, want nothing to do with it,

I just live there, that’s all – but you only have to see

    the Grote Kerk rising from afar amid

                the tangle of roofs and facades,

and you immediately feel like a child that after a school trip

                — Very enjoyable: lots of ice cream, lots of chips –

gets off the bus and with suitcase or bag in hand 

    runs into the street where his house is: the party

            may be over, but here he's at home:

            look, there goes the milkman, he has

        got a new float and there

is the tree where once the firemen rescued Marietje's cat.

They're little things: I know, a friend

from Twente who went to Normandy every year

and to whom I showed the harbours, exclaimed in surprise: ‘But Dordt

    is much more beautiful than Honfleur!’ That may be true,

but if men only loved beautiful women

    few would get married: if you love Dordt

                you don't just love the Groothoofd,

the Damiatenbrug, the Bolwerk, the Pottenkade,

                but you have an equally soft spot

for the Stoofstraat, the Hoge Bakstraat, the Wilgenbos: places

    that no tourist has ever taken a slide of,

            because Dordt is not just the river

            with everything that comes with it,

    but a clumb of atmosphere, a climate, in which

you might need to have even been born to be able to breathe there permanently.

But let's be honest: is it that much better in Buenos Aires, 

Tokyo, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Paris?

(Not to mention Loon-op-Zand

    or Sint Anna Parochie) –surely not:

wherever people live you can only survive 

    with a disposition or a barrel of

                pep pills and tranquillizers,

and moving brings nothing but headaches and costs a lot of money.

                No, it's best to live

where your roots are, where you can think: oh yes, that's where

    I always stood waiting for Stientje, and this is where

            I ran into my mother.

            The rest is just backdrop,

    whether it's called Piazza San Marco

or Broadway or Penny Lane or Spui or Bois de Boulogne.

Dublin revisited by Ben Ros

Ben Ros (1952-1994) in Connemara - 1992

photo © Johannes van den Bos  

Dublin revisited

Introibo ad altare Dei

and bewildered by the same lass

who showed Stephen her thighs

at the bay of the snotty green sea.

And later that day a pint in McDaid's

under the boldly painted eye

of Brendan Behan.

Drink in, absorb; it's still possible now.

‘A pint of plain is your only man’,

as Flann O' correctly once wrote.

Because when soon the days

are shining too clear

in the low, the low countries

and the wind blows too, but not bleak,

then by emptying the bottle

my whole goddamed trunk will be filled

with yearning for that far-away country

of littres and literature-

Ó Eire, land so dear

of liquor and literature!


Original title: Dublin revisited. Published in: Literair tijdschrift 'Van Overheidswege' - 1e jaargang nr 4 voorjaar 1983 Rotterdam

The eccentric by Rein van de Wetering

Rein van de Wetering
[1937-2023]

Original title: 'de zonderling'

From the collection: 'Achter de hand', 1978

Uitgeverij Corrie Zelen, Maasbree

The eccentric

his garden is overgrown with weeds

undermined by moles

instead of flowers

there are dried-up thistles

in his room, from the ceiling

cobwebs hang down

and the dampness from the walls

affects his spine

he experiences sympathy from the children

the parents shake their heads

Fairly peaceful at sea by L. Th. Lehmann

 

Fairly peaceful at sea                                                                

L.Th. Lehmann [1920-2012]

Blood-salty sea, which they call Mother,

mother without arms to catch,

without legs to chase,

without a throat to scream,

without hands to grab us,

without teeth to crush us.

The sea does nothing like mothers do,

but those waves are mouths too

and certainly she can swallow us up,

but often enough she can't be bothered.

(Original title: 'Redelijke zeevrede' - from: 'Gedichten 1939-1998', 2000 - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam)

To Dublin by K. Schippers

                                                                                                                                                                                         

To Dublin                                                                             

K. Schippers (Gerard Stigter)
1936 - 2021

for Philip Mechanicus

I flew once from Amsterdam to Dublin.

Later I wrote:

Above the North Sea and the English coast

I looked down

and I saw the map from the Bos Atlas:

the word North Sea

printed a little skewed in the water

and the names of the coastal cities

also in the sea

because on the land

there was no room anymore.

If I go again

then I might write:

Above the North Sea and the English coast

looking down,

saw the sea and the English coast.

Or:

The sky was like the colour of my socks,

but I couldn't see

whether it was ebb or flow.

Reality does not suffer

among those observations.

They are only

different points of view.

(Original title: 'Naar Dublin' - from: Poëzie is een 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.