Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Marc Tritsmans: 'Het boek van de vader'

 Father’s book

 

In search of the world I delved determinedly

in his bookcase and chose with much care paid

to weight and scent – paper and layout were

also of importance. I read with a young hunger

 

and desire, followed the tracks he here and there

left behind in pencil. And then he died and

the book and I, we survived. In what is still royal-blue

ink I refind today on the flyleaf his writing

 

just name and date, but in my mind’s eye see before me

the young man on what was his twenty-eighth birthday

and who of me, his future son, as yet had no inkling.

 

Like some meteorite from earlier warmer times

this father’s book now rests here scorching in a hand

that has already begun to resemble his.

 

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