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.