johnirons: Cycle of poems by the Dutch writer René Puthaar

Everything returned

for Tatjana

Round house and stables prowls the word - a murderer

whose knife you can hear whetted on the stone.

Ida Gerhardt

It is the machinations of the night.

Transmitter seeking frequencies, this time

a voice, the buzzing of an alley-web

in which the crackleware of fearful cries,

all air-tight sealed, the childish whining sounds

of cats, the asphalt whispering beneath

a man who’s tumbling and who gasps for breath.

Scribbled, that in the grass I dared the sun

and sought for anything that was afloat,

eluded and evading in the light

and saw no more, just merely now and then

a whirring came from something giant-winged

turning in steady gyres as I lay there.

An ink-cartridge, the coalblack glittering

of water, in the street an antique safe

wide-open waiting for an early bird,

shadows of things that can be levelled out,

and in the windowpane the lamp betrays

a head whose cavities see nobody.

It is the machinations of the night.

Screwed, that it seemed to be an outpost of the world

where once again we met, so vacantly amazed

to see the other here, during a perfect moment

departed like a dog that vanished in a hole

after it broke, the lead, and in the blind approach

a jet-black piece of life was lost on sheets of ice

in eye-sockets and in a mouth, the chilly hand

that was unclenched at last for the entanglement.

Screwed, that it seemed to be an outpost of the world.

It is the glass you drink some water from, the surface

in which your face inlays a hologram or a trompe-l’oeil,

bent on lucky pieces, by preference Venetian,

for without you it has a fairer chance, the lasting on

of things long-since discarded, chandeliers that in the fog

of the palazzos cold as always concentrate the light,

in what’s exposed the mind exists as little as the flesh.

Allowed, that any woman turned up on the square, only in search

of what could be a child, a brief existence, so dearly

lost in alleys, to be discovered in a dead-end lane

that once, recalled, will be a portal to San Marco’s space,

where temporary bridges bear mothers with their offspring

all bending over heaven’s gate, a lion wags its tail.

As long as ripples will persist, the merry show goes on.

It is the glass you drink some water from, the surface.

Laughed, that it sounded for a while

as if a royal china set

was shattering, all the servants

attempted to appear unmoved

though on the cheek of porcelain

of the princess a tear appeared,

not that it pleased her, by no means,

the delicate perspective where

the hart keeps the line of the shot,

the rigid pointer seeks to match

the fox, Diana’s half undraped

with partridges right at her feet,

quite simply though because it seemed,

and a resemblance cannot break,

as if repair could not take place,

to satyr can the hunter change,

the bearskin can be ridden on

and swiftly she’d conclude blood-ties

while she well knows that all is lost,

the fox’s lair serves as her bed,

the path of potsherds leads to her

and on the cheek of porcelain

of the princess a tear appears.

Laughed, that it sounded for a while.

It is a sea of black. Moon-fishes overturn

their silver sides, snap up air above Rotterdam

harbours, fuddled with light roam onwards. The blessing

of a winter’s night. The glittering of pitch dark.

The water-levels as expected, then a song

about some yellow submarine. There is no date.

Between the sheets her hip sticks up, out of control.

Believed, that everything’s asleep but can still wake.

The cold asleep, the clock, the stars counted like sheep

and in whose midst the wolf will suddenly appear

that I am to myself, who with a blooded muzzle

sniffs at the fear the sleeper harbours in his dream,

someone at home inside an unfamiliar house.

where everything’s asleep, it seems can hardly wake.

It is a sea of black. Moon-fishes overturn.

Run, till my feet went on ahead along the path

and I stood still as if I saw the winding track

which unpaved leaves the town behind and rids itself

of alleys, squares and stopovers, and which allows

the foot to stray, released from me, perhaps

consumed with longing for a field of corn, a tramp

who with a hat of straw and tatters in the wind

scares off the flock of crows, consigned still to his place

among the wanderers, and kindred with Van Gogh

now I see him for whom the traveller departs

to burn up on the endless road to Tarascon.

Run, till my feet went on ahead along the path.

It is a room in the surveying of the swift,

in full flight making for the major window, cleaned

by one who’s sure that summertime will come, testing

the transparency of this unknown self-portrait

that’s saying to the swift: fly inside, traveller,

where one will find the view of your domain, the blue

where heavenwide no one can see that it is you

That, homeward bound, one’s able to forget oneself.

It is a room in the surveying of the swift.

Seen, just as I saw Manhattan once. So full of promise,

a nascent Easter Island, just as on summer mornings

I had discovered Amsterdam as a forsaken house;

inside the villa herons wandered, water stood stagnant

in lofty passages, or I like to fancy that

I can depart, a single journey, nothing in return.

A kite’s flown by a child like this. The tension of the line

resolves as it itself takes off, soaring above the sand

until the string breaks and resistance then is felt -

gravity which seeks, above it all, the vanishing point.

A kite’s string, as animations sometimes can reveal,

are able to form figures on the paper - like the cock’s foot which,

with severed tendons, starts clawing when the string is jerked.

Seen, just as I saw Manhattan once. So full of promise,

It is a wild hunt on the loose.