Thursday 31 December 2015

Knowledge of nature by Jan Eijkelboom


Knowledge of nature

From the procession car we had a view now and then
of forsythias, vividly set off against the
dull misery of too well-kept houses.

Near the aula we wondered what sort of tree
stood there on the lawn with paper-white blossoms.
We took it as read that it was a kind of prunus.

After the music of Bach and coffee with cake
we returned to the home of the deceased. Behind it
the grass was covered with forget-me-nots,

or so we thought. A former teacher
was able to tell us however that it was
periwinkle. Out of cut glass

we drank the whisky to which the deceased,
once a lighthearted taster, had given preference.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008
[photo Internet]







Original title: 'Kennis der natuur'- From the collection: 'De wimpers van de dageraad', 1987 - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam

De pianist by Jan Eijkelboom


The pianist

The fanatic folds
at the top of the back of his tails
when he pulls his right shoulder up high
to then let his hand come down
not for a sledgehammer blow
but to bring about the lightest
possible tone.

Meanwhile Richter tastes the music
as if he is chewing tobacco.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008
[photographer unknown]

Original title: 'De Pianist'- From the collection: 'Binnensmonds jubelend', 2004 - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam

Wednesday 30 December 2015

Il Poverello by Manuel Kneepkens


Il Poverello

Waiting for the golden tramcar
bound for the Nirvana of Nothingness
the one from Wassenaar to Scheveningen

I thought:

Brother Dune, I thank you for your humility
Sister Beach, I thank you for your nudity
Brother Sea, I thank you for your alluvion

This was what I thought
though I had left brother Trunks
at home.....

Manuel Kneepkens [1942]

Tuesday 29 December 2015

Eire by Manuel Kneepkens


Eire

What am I to do in this rain-drenched
moss-green
island

the sun
sets there
whiskey-coloured

visit a Pub, I think
and from there
drunk...

-at the stroke of closing time
full of midnight
desires

plan to call
the sweetest copper-haired
of all Ireland

if she wants to be unfaithful,
Miss Deirdre of Usnach
with me, a stranger
from Bergen, North-Holland

(her fairylike green eyes
as frivolous
as an Easter Rising...)

westwards far
behind the molehills
of the pixies!


O, Ireland, Blissful Island
besides
the ulcus
of Ulster...

Manuel Kneepkens [1942]
(photo Internet)


Original title: Eire

The woman of the scales by K. Michel



The woman of the scales

half hidden under the foliage
of an imperial figtree
she stands in a check apron
broadly-build and on plastic slippers
their red colour standing out vividly
against her tanned skin

she is about forty
her children except the youngest
have all left home
and her husband, that's a different story

she is not standing there doing nothing
no, between the overhanging leaves
protrudes the large opening of a sousaphone
she holds its tubular body
tight in her char-arms
while she practises scales

and the sparkling like full-blooded tones
burst from the bell of the metal horn
and her cheeks go boom flap
boom flap up and down
like the wings of a bird
ponderously flying up out of the water

later that day after the cleaning
of the thirtieth hotel room
she will put on another dress at home
and make way with her sound
ahead of the bridal couple, first to the church
and then to the feast while the rest
of the marching brass band will let
themselves be pushed forward by her bass tones

a last detail: she wears no rings
she believes in the existence of the soul 

K. Michel [1958]
photo: Roeland Fossen


Original title: De vrouw van de toonladders From: Tirade 349 November/December 1993 - jaargang 37 - Uitgeverij G.A. van Oorschot, Amsterdam

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

Saturday 5 September 2015

Fear is nearby by Richter Roegholt


Fear is nearby

Fear is nearby
in air and water
in the bread that we give to the children
fear when I was a child came from Spain
from Guernica and Teruel
the photo page the newsreel
a child flees with a little dog in its arm
my first ruins
and carts with furniture
fear was in a false certificate
a German Jew had to go to America
a child goes through such a thing at a distance
but it knows that fear is close by
during the war fear was around you
when you went to school with your bike on the escalator
that was in the tunnel in Rotterdam
there could be Germans at the exit
but you could better behave as if the fear was not there

fear was always there since Teruel
since Herosjima since Bikini
it does not matter if the weapon gets bigger
it was already big enough in Guernica
a boy flees runs away clasps a dog in his arm
that dog is already dead the newsreel
spares you nothing shows just a sharp effect
that dog is dead that child clasps in its arm
something utterly worthless that child will also die soon
it was for nothing all was for nothing

fear is a companion walks beside you does not look at you
you don't feel him
but if you feel
if you feel the fear for what's coming
you think later it comes again
the war comes again the air turns bad
then you also think about someone who won by a hair's breadth
a man with little children who looks almost like us
it looks like he also didn't want war
as if he didn't understand anything of us
as if he understood my companion fear
as if he just wanted to be on friendly terms with his wife
you never saw anything like that with people who make war
astonished with tears in your eyes you read in the paper
that someone like us declined war
that someone was young and didn't want war
so it seemed a short while
he won a hair's breadth on fear
it was not much he was shot dead anyway
you think about that when you look around you
and see that fear is close by

Richter Roegholt [1925-2005]

Original title: 'Angst is dichtbij' - From: Maatstaf 8, novembernummer 1967 - Uitgeverij Daamen NV, Den Haag.

Thursday 3 September 2015

The dodo by C. Buddingh'

The dodo

In fifteen ninety-eight
    discovered on Mauritius
    by Dutch sailors;
    they called it 'walghvogel',
took it with them to Amsterdam
    and exhibited it there.

It was a kind of pigeon, bigger than a turkey,
    with an odd, hooked beak,
    (as you can still see
    on a painting of Savery),
and it laid just one, big white egg
    on an untidy little heap of grass.

Dodo meant 'dope' or 'sucker'
    (from the Portugese 'doudo');
    every time when a ship
    called at the island, it was
for sport or for resupply
    butchered by thousands.

The sailors also introduced pigs,
    who ate the eggs
    and the chicks, who like
    their parents could not fly.
In sixteen eighty-one the last one
    was bludgeoned.

In the marshes on Mauritius
    they have over and over again
    excavated skeletons,
    but there further remains
only a leg, with the foot still on it,
    that is carefully preserved in Oxford.


C. Buddingh' [1918-1985]

Original title: 'De dodo' - From the collection 'Gedichten 1938 / 1970' - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij - Amsterdam - 1977.

Saturday 6 June 2015

mutiny by Rein van de Wetering


mutiny

1
he's sick of it
being stooped
to dig and
carp at
the land

2
regularly
he sets off
the knive
up his sleeve

3
while the waves surge
intrigue breaks out
in the hold

the captain is landed
with the riffraff
he has gone aground

they throw the bible overboard
and invent
another god



Original title: 'muiterij' - From the collection: 'Achter de hand', 1978 - Uitgeverij Corrie Zelen, Maasbree

Sunday 8 March 2015

Geranium by Hans Vlek


Geranium

From the badly-sitting
school bench in a smell of dust
old wood and piss, underneath high windows
in blistered frame, the red
of the geranium.

My grandmother slaving away above
a tub in the garden and beside
the neat tile path in a row, in the red
of which my grandpa spoke at
meetings: geraniums.

At home we had one
that never wanted to flower because
everyone put their fags out
in the pot. O lord, the sadness
of its hairy-green, bony
stem!

Geranium, splendid flower
that's not beautiful, wine
from the grocer, chicken
among the birds, jewel
of all that is cheap and nasty.

Hans Vlek [1947]


Original title: 'Geranium' - From: Maatstaf 12, maartnummer 1968 - Uitgeverij Daamen NV, Den Haag.

Wednesday 28 January 2015

abandoned bicycle by Rein van de Wetering


abandoned bicycle

the dynamo is bust
it's raining
the tyres are flat
on sunday
it stands against the wall
betrayed
rusty
with broken handlebars

Rein van de Wetering [1937]
Original title: 'achtergelaten fiets' - From the collection: 'Achter de hand', 1978 - Uitgeverij Corrie Zelen, Maasbree

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

Sunday 4 January 2015

The Bride Valley during the Big Freeze by Hans van den Bos


The Bride Valley during the Big Freeze

The valley looked
like a boiling lake,
with the higher ground
as islands.
Down the Sugarloaf
a glacier of icy-snow
streamed into that grey soup.

A thin sky-bridge
made of lost clouds
hung between
Knockmealdowns and Comeraghs.
I watched this nature event
from Knockaun
under a wintery blue sky,
while angry clouds were gathering
on the north-west horizon,
probably more snow or sleet.

With my feet
in already eternal snow,
I went back in my thoughts
to Carl Sagan's film
of the Cosmos.

Hans van den Bos [1948]


Original title: De vallei van de Bride tijdens de vorst - 2014

Friday 2 January 2015

The bargeman's mate by Hans van den Bos


The bargeman's mate

On 18th October, 1951,
a barge was moored midstream,
close to the Mallegat,
on the river Meuse in Rotterdam,
waiting for a towboat to sail
back to the Ruhr region
to load a new cargo of coal.

The mate was cleaning the deck
using a metal bucket on a rope.
He had been living for half a year
in the fore-cabin of the ship,
together with his wife,
who was 6 months pregnant
and their three year old son.

Dropping the bucket back
into the river to refill it,
he lost his balance
and disappeared under water,
while, at that very moment,
his little son was playing
on the roof of the deckhouse.

After eighteen days searching
and dragging the river downstream,
the river police found him under the ship,
at almost exactly the same place
as he had fallen in,
with the rope of the bucket
still wound around his hand.

In 1958, the primary school,
attended by the mate's little boy,
tried to teach him to swim
in the floating swimming pool
close to the place
where his father had drowned.


Original title: De schippersknecht - 2014
Hendrik van den Bos
[15th Jan. 1922 - 18th Oct. 1951]


The barge 'Wisand' 


Thursday 1 January 2015

Coolbeggan in Autumn by Hans van den Bos


Coolbeggan in Autumn

The horizon turns red,
slowly a glowing ball appears,
but vanishes fast behind a grey-pink cloud.
No hunters, no cars,
the wind forecasts rain,
maybe that's why.
In a field two young calfs gambol,
one black, the other white,
apartheid out of the question.
Near the barrier a faraway text.

Hans van den Bos [1948]


Original title: Coolbeggan in de herfst - 2011

Tradition in Adrigole by Hans van den Bos


Tradition in Adrigole

Pub, fillingstation, post and food.
On the door a yellowed poster:
Every night live traditional music.

Inside the dark room a boy,
sixteen years old, smoking,
pulls perfect pints of stout.

At the bar Mr. Korsakoff,
in conversation with a tall, scrawny man.
Two old shepherds, on a couch by the window,
gaze deep into their pints of Guinness.

The BBC brings news of Europe
and shows bad weather in the UK.
Outside, the sun shines low over Beara.
Music every night, except tonight.

Hans van den Bos [1948]


Original title: Traditie in Adrigole - 2008