VERSES OF A CHINESE FROM DORDRECHT by C. Buddingh'

(translation in progress)

Original title: 

Verzen van een Dordtse Chinees - 

Publisher: 

De Bezige Bij - Amsterdam - 1980.

In memory of Po Tjiu I 

and for Jan Eijkelboom, 

even though he comes from Slikkerveer.

Autumn with chestnuts It is 4th October, but still nice, calm weather. The trees are motionless like soccer players when the national anthem is played. This is the pure song of autumn. Of course: decay has already set in, but slowly, kindly subdued. On the table is a dish with brown-shining chestnuts. Subject to calamities they will shrivel sooner then me.		Only twenty seconds It's strange, to be in the autumn of your life. Sometimes, when I wake up on Sunday morning, I hear my mother calling: 'Kees! Get up! You have to play soccer at ten!' And then I almost run to the attic to get my shoes and shin-guards. Of course, I don't. But just for a moment, maybe only twenty seconds I'm nineteen again.
In the streetlight It's evening, the lights switch on. Just sixty years ago I looked, nose against steamed-up window, how the lamplighter made of a dark-threatening incipient universe a safe-intimate world. 'We have stew tonight, and for afters a semolina pudding.' I don't eat stew and semolina anymore. But where have all the bats gone?		With you I have had many girlfriends, almost always good looking, almost always fresh and lively, and it was often highly pleasant. But only when I saw you, my love, more beautiful than any before, but above all with that gold-blond haze of wistfulness and melancholy, I knew: with you I can be at home. In a country without grey skies I could never settle.
I, old Chinese farmer I, old Chinese farmer, saw generations come, generations go, laws, traditions, customs change, air fleets meet with disaster, earth scorch, stars emerge, novas pulverize. I, old Chinese farmer, in my little black hole.		Morning walk This morning I walked for just a moment on the moon and thought: 'A pressure suit is also not ideal.' But I met no one at all and that was rather a relief.
1933 /1979 The brown maples opposite my house are loosing their first leaves again. Cars roar through the street, one every few seconds, where I in 1933 on Sundays played tennis with my little sister. How we have once, brothers maple, been terrifying small.		As a boy As a boy I cut reed stems and made whistles of them. I never got much sound out of them. But it didn't matter, that was not the intention. You had a knife and in the water you saw little silver fish moving.
With wife and sons I know my wife for thirty-eight years. My eldest son studies history. My youngest son is a translator. When we sit together my ancestors watch with a smile.		Together Midges are dancing in front of my window. 'Tomorrow good weather,' my mother would say. Dusk is falling. My father comes in. Together we smoke a wild Havana.
Last night I dreamt Last night I dreamt that I was the president of the people's republic Island of Dordt. And immediately I needed a bodyguard and a car with bulletproof glass windows, watch out for coups by reactionaries and for those on the make inside my own party. I'm sitting in the garden, my wife is hanging out the washing. If the gods remain well-disposed towards me maybe I will write a few lines later.		T'sing T'sing I'm already quite tipsy and actually want to go to bed. But I see that the bottle is still not empty yet. Come on, don't give up, Kees. Think of your friend Li Tai Po.
Believe me The tops of the mulberry trees rustled. But yet again God did not pass by. The wisest thing a farmer can do is sit at ease on his field.		Kootje When you're getting older life is often like pages in a photo album. But we have a young tomcat on board again, Wiebe christened him Kootje. He dances and romps around our room. And we sing the beautiful Dordt's song: 'Haven't you seen little Koot, it's a lad of ten years old, Haven't you seen him walk, with his bandy legs, listen to what I say little Koot is away.' When we celebrate his tenth birthday I will be seventy-one.
Indian summer Blackbirds are pecking, almost in the window, the red berries from our firethorn. It is Sunday, Wiebe comes home. His footstep tells me that DFC has won.		Backache For almost two weeks I'm tormented again by a terrible attack of backache. I take medicine, three times daily Stientje rubs my back with liniment and I wear, night and day, a flannel cloth. It hardly helps at all: at the oddest moments it's as if an invisible giant suddenly snaps me in two. In between the damns I groan with Slauerhoff: 'Confucius' indigence in Sjen was worse.'
In memoriam Jaap Duits Now you too, Jaap, friend from my younger years: first a leg amputated, just a month later deceased: cancer of course. Again a voice in my life is struck dumb. And you were so good at chattering and jabbering Sometimes we begged you, even Tonnie and I: 'Please Japie, just shut up for five minutes!' And then you held your tongue, two minutes. Last night, in my dream, I heard the angels asking: 'Lord, are we allowed to wear earplugs in future?'		Visible / invisible The lamp above my table mirrors itself twice in the glass of my bay window. Like immobile, soft-cream celestial bodies hanging above the Bankastraat, invisible for those walking underneath them.
Why? Why should I go to a pub, listen to drivel, ego-tripping, while here, on the tiled garden path, the most beautiful ants scuttle about, yes, even sometimes a red velvet mite.		About God About God I only seldom ponder. Later, when we are dead, we will see. Although: most likely we will see nothing at all. Finito is the fleeting party. We are simply not there anymore.
Thinking of Riekus Waskowsky The last time we were playing chess (in 'De Lantaren' in Rotterdam) you beat me hands down. Your death deprived me of my revenge. And how I would have liked to have hammered you a few times, if only just to shed light on the matter: especially at the board class distinction is a must. But now I would give anything to lose from you a few times every week.		Trails of smoke and darkness Trails of smoke drift under my lamp. Just as we too drift through space and time. God Kees gets up and puts the light out. It will be dark in all eternity.
New Year's Eve It's the last day of the year. Already bangers are thundering and whizzers are screaming everywhere. I also like fireworks alright, but only elegant, colourful, poetic ones, not just banging and booming. People, I think, should not do anything that make cats afraid.		Sammie Buddingh' Sammie is getting old. Often he lies woolgathering gazing into the distance. Then it's as if you see him thinking drowsily: 'What was that thing again, a mouse?' When he lies under his pine the blackbirds alight just five metres away from him to pick up invisible crumbs. He hardly even blinks anymore. But Peer still gives him a wide berth. In Kootje's eyes he is a giant, a monster. Sometimes if I sit in his chair he first looks at me a little reproachfully and then miaows very softly.
Don't panic A severe frost is forecast again. Oh well: we'll just put on an extra woolly vest and long johns		Birds too When I was young you could often see sparrows greedily picking at steaming horse-dung. But there is no horse-dung anymore, only dog shit remains. And it seems to contain nothing, that contributes to the nourishment of the sparrow Birds too, I sometimes think, would hardly recognize the world, if they could come back.
Behind me I'm sitting on the couch. The wood fire glows. Kootje is lying on my lap, Peer and Sam at my feet. Also today I could eat and drink again as much as I wanted. Stientje has already gone to bed and I am still reading a bit in Aksakov. Behind me, in the hospital, the flash of lights in the operating room.		Gravity, for instance I admit: I am really not a rebel. But against whom should you revolt? Gravity, for instance, often I hate immensely: always with your nose pressed to the ground. And the world is: misery, decay, disease, death. But just try jumping off it. We are incarcerated in the here and now and the Grim Reaper is our warder.
Yet again that's how it is I have never swum  across the Yangtze. Indeed, not even the Wantij. 'Swimming,' I haughtily used to say, 'should be done for us by our regents.'		Sometimes Sometimes it is as if my left hand is already older then my right.
Just keep hoping A misty evening and northerly wind. Seldom did much good come from the north. But tonight, as I lie awake, I may hear again the sound of the ship horns.		Snow at night Before going to bed I look outside for a moment: thick, downy flakes are whirling down like minuscule little parachutes: Jack Frost has taken possession of the earth again. And I peer at it full of tenderness. But before I used to rejoice inside: 'Tomorrow I can throw snowballs!'
Man and goldfish The goldfish swims around in his bowl. What does it see shimmering through the glass? I close up my typewriter and gaze into the night.		Not that fortunately Two hundred meters from where I live is the house where I was born. I pass it once almost every day. I used to shoot marbles there, played with a hoop, a top, was run over by a horse and cart. Yes, whatever they may say about me, I haven't wandered far from my origins.
Says the gaslight boy		To night, in the mist
Alex van der Heide