Poetry from the Low Countries: December 2016

Thursday 22 December 2016

Oldtimer by Manuel Kneepkens

Oldtimer

And in Arcadia my father in his cult cabriolet, a Joyce Jupiter
The Bronze Age of Romans and Celts overshadowed
by the joycean hat brim of his Borsalino

And always in Valkenburg, on the top of the Cauberg
at the height of Klant's Zoo (closed for ages)
he called to me over his shoulder

''Are we rising, Sunny Boy?''

The entire Chalkland gushed green over my tongue
In my stomach the swirling Styx
came to a stop

Ah well, I wanted to belong to the Army
of Hellas' able-bodied men, however carsick I was before Troy....

''On the contrary we
D
E
S
C

N
D
Darth Father!''

And our escape from South Limburg's labyrinth
had not yet begun......

(No way green hills! No way Deirdre! No way Sons of Usnach:

Foolhardy IRA-members, all of them!)

Poor daddy

Engineer Daedalus

Bloody Belfast

Manuel Kneepken (1942)
[photo Internet]

Original Title: Old Timer

Wednesday 21 December 2016

Interrupted interview with Shakespeare by Willem M. Roggeman

Interrupted interview with Shakespeare

On a midsummer night
when I had had enough
because even being alone
can sometimes last too long
I put a chair in front of me
and on the chair a portrait of Shakespeare.
I talked to him at length
and he listened patiently
so he turned out to be
a great listener too,
and thereafter asked him questions
to which he responded enthusiastically,
with comprehensive answers,
because it was a long time ago
that someone had asked him anything.
He talked nineteen to the dozen
about how he was obliged to marry
the much older Ann Hathaway
and about his friendship
with the Count of Southampton
for whom he wrote the poem
'Venus and Adonis',
all he went through
in the grubby alleys and slums of London
and the blue colour of longing
for the trees and lawns of Stratford.
He had just begun
to explain
what he had projected
of himself in Romeo
and who actually was his Julia
when a man entered the room.
Without saying a word
the man peered around
and with a short sharp movement
put an egg
amongst Shakespeare's hair
as if it were a birdsnest.
Then he began loudly
and with great conviction
to call cuckoo, cuckoo.
Shakespeare took the egg
out of his hair and
looked at it with sadness.
He shook his head
with disapproval or misunderstanding,
and then tinkling loudly fell apart
into hundreds of colourful
pieces of glass.

Willem G. Roggeman (1935)
[photo Internet]

Original Title: Onderbroken interview met Shakespeare - From: De Tweede Ronde - Tijdschrift voor literatuur - Herfst 1989 - Uitgeverij Bert Bakker BV, Amsterdam.

Bergambacht by Albert Jan Govers

Bergambacht

Driving west of the village
I saw the complete picture,
as from a magic lantern:
the unbending church tower
with houses around it lumped together,
peepers swarming around the hen,
Bergambacht.

My ex-Calvinist friend says:
there must also have been
a hole in the clouds,
with a slanting sunray,
a must: the finger of God,
pointing at the fate of a village,
pushing the people down to the earth.

I didn't see that at all,
the blanket of clouds was unbroken.

Albert Jan Govers (1922-1999)

[no picture available]

Original title: Bergambacht - From: De tweede ronde, Tijdschrift voor literatuur, Zomer 1982 - Uitgeverij Bert Bakker BV, Amsterdam.

Tuesday 20 December 2016

Bergambacht by Ulrich Jeltema

Bergambacht

I wander along the Lekdyke
and smell Bergambacht,
herbs from the past.
Polderwind blowing
along the mills
Bachtenaar, Den Arend,
grinding for water and bread
beyond the Vlist,
beyond the last sin.

And there the church
inexorably large
between upward-looking
dwarf-like houses.

Autumn in the sky:
a piled-up mass of clouds
secretly blows open
for holes to the sun,
for fingers of light.

That's God's vindictive hand,
pressing against the shire's land,
against this bare soil,
the people who
are goddamned afraid
to die.

Ulrich Jeltema (1923-2005)

[no picture available]

Original title: Bergambacht - From: De tweede ronde, Tijdschrift voor literatuur, Zomer 1982 - Uitgeverij Bert Bakker BV, Amsterdam.