Jan Kostwinder: 'Zonder graven' (PS 41)

 

Zonder graven

 

Men mag hier niet lopen,

de bodem is een kleurloos vlies.

De grond gaat zonder graven

onder ieders voeten open.

 

Wit welt het veendras uit.

Het stroomt door voren

in het landschap naar de vlegel.

Geen korenaar blijft onbespat.

 

 

Without digging

 

Here walking’s forbidden,

the top-soil’s a colourless skin.

Without digging the ground falls

open where a foot has trodden.

 

White wells out of the quagmire fen.

It flows through furrows

in the landscape towards the flail.

No ear of corn stays unspattered.

 

 

Translated in collaboration with Albert Hagenaars

Poetic Synapses 41

 

Anton van Duinkerken: 'Thuis op het kerkhof'

 

Thuis op het kerkhof

 

Tussen de zerken, lezend het verleden

Van deze kleine stad, waaruit ik kwam,

Waarheen ik telkens wederkeer, vernam

Ik achter mij stil naderende schreden.

 

Verwonderd zag ik om. Even beneden

Het kruis in ’t midden draagt een vrouw een vlam.

Dit stenen beeld, vlak naast een treurwilgstam,

Stond of ’t gereed was, op mij toe te treden.

 

Geen levend mens was daar, maar het geluid,

Dat mij bedroog, scheen deze vrouw te wekken

En in mijn angst bracht zij de woorden uit:

 

‘Sla geen geloof aan klanken, die u trekken,

De waarheid is een vuur, geen ijdel woord;

Wie waarheid spreekt, die draagt een schroeiwond voort.’

 

 

Back home at the cemetery

 

Among the tombstones, read past lives remind me

Of this small town where I was born and bred

And still revisit, I could sense the tread

Of steps approaching quietly from behind me.

 

Amazed, I turned – and glimpsed a woman, slightly

Below the central cross, who bore a flame.

This statue with its weeping willow frame

Stood as if ready to step closer lightly.

 

No living soul was there, but the same sound

That had deceived me seemed her to have woken

And for my fear these timely words she found:

 

‘Place no belief in sounds that tempt when spoken,

For truth’s a fire, no idle word or deed;

Who speaks the truth must scorched through life proceed.’

 

 

Anton van Duinkerken: 'Lantarens te Malmö' (PS 40)

 

LANTARENS TE MALMÖ

 

De zee draagt naglans van het eens geleefde leven

van wezens wier bestaan een kindersprookje werd:

hun handen lichtten groen, hun voorhoofd, goudbesterd,

werd milder dan het onze naar het licht geheven.

 

Het ving de glans der zon in zo veel schitteringen

van al te stralend goud, dat iedereen verblind

in zijn verheerlijktheid zichzelf verloor, ontzind

over een gulden plein liep, en begon te zingen.

 

Die wandelaars zijn met hun gouden stad verloren:

ze werden zee, hun zang werd ruisende eeuwigheid;

slechts aan het water kan de tovergloed behoren,

die onze zon over hun hoofden had gespreid.

 

Maar nu de nachtwind het veelvormige bewegen

der havenstad tot enkel ademtocht verstilt,

zijn de lantarens op de zee-langsgaande wegen

voor dit verzonken rijk van zonnegoud zeer mild.

 

 

LANTERNS IN MALMÖ

 

The sea wears after-gleams of life once lived by creatures

for whom existence then became a fairy tale:

their hands grew eerie green, their gold-starred forehead sailed

more mildly upwards to the light than our raised features. 

 

It caught the sun’s bright rays in glintings almost stinging

of far too radiant gold, so everyone, struck blind

by its magnificence, got lost, then lost his mind,

raced off across a golden square and started singing.

 

Lost are those wanderers as too their golden city:

they turned to sea, their song soughed on for ever more;

the magic gleam is only water’s – more’s the pity –

which our sun spread out o’er each head in days of yore.

 

But now the night wind hushes diverse forms of motion

of this port’s harbour to a single breath of air,

the lanterns on the roads that line the strip of ocean

are for this sun-gold sunken realm still mildly there.

 

 

Translated in collaboration with Albert Hagenaars

Poetic Synapses 40

 

 

Ivan Malinowski: 'Mosquito song' (plus Klaus Høeck's variations)

 

Mosquito song

 

in the june night this dream

 

the house borne on the foam of the cherry trees

 

to the gurgling wash of the drowning birds

beneath a bell jar frailer than the mirror of the fjord

 

my sleep the egg of a wren: a wall of

whitewash and optical illusion strained to bursting point

 

quiveringly planted in the dark in the white a sail

and silently there pecks an unseen beak

 

on the mirror’s membrane of wind and salt

 

the burst is imminent

This is a translation of the original Danish poem. In his collection 'In Nomine' (pp.155-159) Klaus Høeck does variations on the text. I have marked the Malinowski poem's lines in red. The Malinowski poem above is a later translation.

in the june summer night this dream

in every detail as we are our

 

selves already on

its foundation of cement

and leca pellets

 

already raised with

beams rafters and roof garland like a new arri

 

val already now:

the house floating on the foam of the cherry trees

the house floating on the foam of the cherry trees

(not the japanese

 

kind of candy floss

and raspberry snow or stiff

ly whisked whites of egg)

 

and all too late for

cherry plum and sour cherry

from the hedgerows but

 

the poem’s zazen

to the gurgling ripples of birds that are drowning

to the gurgling ripples of birds that are drowning 

electric motor

 

and hammer blow the rat

tling staccato volley

of the typewriter

 

work is going on

outside and in on the self

same house and poem

 

the innermost word

beneath a bell more fragile than the fjord’s mirror 

 

 

beneath a bell more fragile than the fjord’s mirror

language is filled up

 

with words like ‘gas con

crete’ – ‘glass wool’ – ‘mortar’ or ‘fasc

ine drainage system’

 

down from the build

ing site of reality

where the dream raises

 

its roof through my poem and in

my sleep the egg of a small wren: a wall

 

 

my sleep the egg of a small wren: a wall

a poem i make a hole in

 

from inside so the

words can slip out as something

else than mirror wri

 

ting and the ima

ages as more than rust dots

on the retina

 

as something else than the dreams

of chalk and bursting optical illusion

 

 

of chalk and bursting optical illusion

the old wall is still standing

 

as a guard of hon

our for washing machine and

for haka tumbler

 

a sentry box of

cracked and damp plaster with col

umbine at its base

 

and with rosethorn

tremblingly planted in the dark the white a sickle

 

 

tremblingly planted in the dark the white a sickle

a lunar plough

 

in panes that are soon

to be replaced by other

real forms of vision

 

with ‘moses’ white hand’

in the rubaiyat of the

butterfly bushes

 

and poetry’s quartz watch shifts

and an unseen beak pecks without a sound

 

 

and an unseen beak pecks without a sound

(unlike the woodpecker that

 

hammers hard at the

elder tree’s hollow trunk with

its freemasonry

 

while the roof is laid

and is screwed firm and tight with

new words on our house)

 

inside there in the final poem

on mirror membrane of wind and salt

 

 

on mirror membrane of wind and salt

and water i inscribe my name

 

with my fore finger

on the dust and sawdust of

the double glazing

 

from where it is just

as swiftly erased once more

by the rain and wind

 

a haiku consisting of nothing more than itself

collapse is near

 

 

collapse is near

all the systems and formulas that bound my poem

 

which i now release

because it is complete and

like everything that

 

finds itself has come

into being has

become sheer reality

 

where it loses itself without trace

in the june summer night this dream 

 

 

 

Klaus Høeck: 'In Nomine' (background information)

 

The collection 'In Nomine', like all of Klaus Høeck's collections' has a very strict, rigorous structure. One of the eight tracks (see below) features poems by famous Danish authors from various periods. These KH does variations on, so a non-Danish reader will miss the evocations. Quite a few of the poems used I have translated. They can be found on the blogspot. There is also a track devoted to the writer Grundtvig. Here too English translations are often on the blogspot.

Klaus Høeck: 'In Nomine' collection (2001)

 

This collection is dedicated to Klaus Høeck's father. The collection 'Eventyret' is dedicated to his mother.

to see the entire collection 'In Nomine', go to here

Klaus Høeck: 'Fairytales' collection (1992)

 

To see Klaus Høeck's collection FAIRYTALES, go to here.

Marie Dauguet: 'Dissonance, accords faux...'

 

Dissonance, accords faux…

 

Dissonance, accords faux et les rayons aigus

Du soleil perforant l’averse translucide;

Rauque rumeur de bise et la complainte acide

Qu’égrènent les pinsons en triolets têtus.

 

Tout rit et pleure ensemble, étranges impromptus,

Fins grêlons crépitants à l’horizon livide.

Au ciel froid brusquement qui bleuit ou s’oxyde

S'aiguisent, bistouris, des triolets pointus.

 

L’étang capricieux obscurément s’azure,

Où se mire le verne à la rouge blessure.

Et, là-haut, tournoyant dans le vent embrumé,

 

Fauve et hâve désir, s’éternise la buse,

Vers la chanson des nids qui la tente et l’abuse,

Ouvrant son aile maigre et son vol affamé.

 

 

 

Dissonances, false chords…

 

Dissonances, false chords and sunlight’s lancing sting

That perforate the sudden and translucent shower;

The chill wind’s husky wheeze and sour complaint that string

Out chaffinches in stubborn triplets by their power.

 

All’s laughter and sad tears, impromptus in strange guise,

Fine hailstones crackling on horizon’s leaden rim.

In chill skies that abruptly blue or oxidise

Some pointed triplets, sharp as scalpels, seem to skim.

 

The fickle pond obscurely gains an azure hue,

In which, with crimson wound, the alder’s seen anew.

And, up above, gyrating in wind’s misty light,

 

Tawny and gaunt desire, the buzzard spirals on,

Towards the song of nests that tempts and then is gone,

Opening its skinny wing, as too its hungry flight.

 

 

 

Klaus Høeck: Three 'Buzzard' poems from various collections

 

 

 

 

       you make me happy

       my beloved like

the buzzard gyrating in

       its epicycles

       like paraffin when

it is ignited like stan

getz on the bossa nova

       waters like the sight

       of the danish flag

that is how happy you make

       me when we are in

       love’s right element

(from: 1001 POEMS)

       time flies past on the

wings of a buzzard in ac

       ross the garden so

       swiftly that it is

only this morning that i

       discover the chan

       ges and notice that

i have come to resemble

       my father as he

       was on the final

photograph taken of him

       all that time ago

(from: In Nomine)


       Was it a

       common buzzard

that hung above Kolding

       like a hand-print

       in plaster that

morning, when you were bound

       for nowhere?

       Were you yourself

       describing rail

wayline circles a

       long dream’s isobars.

(from: HOME)