Translation of a Wim Hofman poem in Lyrisch van Rembrandt

 

AT THE STONE BRIDGE

The tree, the path, the house, the cloudy sky,
all of those things were here, then,
they are here still, there is no road ahead,
nor back. The light overwashes
the bridge and the tree in the middle and everything
is not the way we think and everything’s the same.

People are smears of paint, they stew
in their own stock and stir in the ooze
that is paint, raw umber, black bile,
they have no time, they have no
say, the wind gets up and
holds in its breath at once, the sky clouds over.
No end comes to the death-still
screaming of the tree.
The tree stands there perplexed.
The tree is an explosion
of amazement. The dark
that begs for light, light
that yearns for darkness,
it cannot otherwise. The deeper
the dark, the brighter the light
and time knows no mercy.


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