Tuesday 20 September 2011

A poem on a familiar theme by the Dutch writer Gerrit Komrij


NOLI ME TANGERE

Verse is just ballast. Make it disappear.
You can demolish it if by some code
You cause a bomb (beneath the part that’s there)
Or landmine (in the last line) to explode.

Make sure you light the fuse. A pious hope.
There is no bomb. Yet you’re obliged, yes, come
What may, to swell the verse to its full scope.
Only beyond a slalom lurks the bomb.

At such a point, why do you not resist,
Stop fiddling with it, let it go, desist?
The cord is cut. Yet still you would persist.
A poem must be round to not exist.

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