Friday 27 June 2014

A poem from 'Rib Cities' by the Swedish poet Eva Ström


The loving couple

The loving couple
thin with age, golden-wedding tinged
with brains worn into holes
have become disobedient children
that hide the security alarm
and live clocklessly outside the schedule
among left-overs and dizziness squalor
still in love, elated
in dried-out deposits of memory
disclaim the connection
with the ticking of the metronome

An age has forced its way out
is planning a weak-sighted wedding
rummaging among underclothes
for a down-soft memory

something infantile lingers
at the temple, sweeps past
the dry tears of the ear-conch,
shreds the account
into illegible chips
stretches the features
to thin grimaces
outside the limiting tracks
of the nervous system.

Monday 23 June 2014

This time the ode is my own


ode to ma

woke up with outstretched
forearms hands pointing away
thumbs tucked along fore

fingers muscles taut
the word ‘skein’ in my head though
it should have been ‘hank’

but ‘skein’ is what ma
asked me to hold while she wound
garn into a ball

dip left wrist and up
dip right wrist and up while ma
winds the empty wool

Saturday 14 June 2014

A poem by the young Dutch writer Anne Broeksma

It’s important to live in insipid surroundings

I am an inedible moth
differ from the edible specimens
by behaving like a moron at the right moment

it’s important to live in insipid surroundings
and I’m a great believer in the idea of only being a small example

there are people running around with right to return written behind their eyes
and who at the same time plant a flag on every square centimetre of growth

it’s a question of not wanting to fly towards the light
of not becoming the umpteenth twit that disappears into the sun

Wednesday 11 June 2014

WYRIWYG - a Høeck poetic

ode on listening to music

what appeals to me
so much about haydn’s mus
ic is you get what

you hear – man bekommt
was man hört – the same applies
to poetry i

sincerely hope – you
get what you read for if the
words meant something else

than precisely what
is there on the page why not
write that something else?

Saturday 7 June 2014

And a Whitsun poem from Klaus Høeck


       wind


       yeeah – let’s go out to
the vollsmose part of town
       together and see
       what’s cooking let’s go
out to the table of ba
       bel in the midst of
       diversity right
now at whitsun come on come
       with me in the po
       em and the spirit –
come don’t be afraid outland
       ish says the soundtrack

       come on then – it does
n’t cost anything (as it
       does at the zoo
       logical gardens
opposite) you’ll get a free
       peek in behind the
       headscarves the wind is
greener than the saudi-a
       rabian flag and
       the election post
ers are just the same as they
       are everywhere else

        what did i tell you –
there is nobody who’s throw
       ing stones at you no
       body slitting your
tyres nobody scratching the
       paintwork nobody
       insulting you or
your wife no cursing of the
       holy spirit there
       are not even a
ny graffiti whatsoev
       er on your poem

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Just the poem for today! Klaus Høeck in the last section of 'Palimpsest'


ode to peace of mind

i can’t remember
what i am to remember
and i’ve forgotten

what i am to for
get i can’t remember what
i am to forget

and i’ve forgotten
what i am to remember
for just a brief mo

ment i find myself
in a state of utter now
ness and peace of mind

Tuesday 3 June 2014

A translation of 'The Carillon' by the Dutch poet Ida Gerhardt


The carillon

The people in the streets looked stricken,
their ashen faces drawn and tight, –
then something made their features quicken
and, listening, they seemed brushed with light.

For in the clock-tower when, resounding,
the bronze-chimed hour had died away,
the carilloneur began his pounding
and everywhere was heard to play.

Valerius: – a solemn singing
with bass bell’s tolling undertone
and flickerings of lighter ringing:
‘We raise our eyes to Thy high throne.’

As one of all those nameless people
who by the house fronts came to stand,
I listened to the pealing steeple
that sang of my afflicted land.

This speechless gathering, beyond us
the city with Dutch light above –
I’ve never for what’s stolen from us
felt such a bitter, bitter love.

War year 1941

Sunday 1 June 2014

A favourite poem by Erik Menkveld

THE NEW FISH


Already when the specimen was being served
adjoining tables stop the digging
of further trenches in the chestnut purée,

the spading of curled-up lettuce leaves
stagnates, wines linger in lifted glasses:
this fish is not the usual feast

of the deep. A revelation,
hauled it would seem from primordial
waters. Though head and tail-fin gone,

seasoned fishermen blinked back their tears
at the sight of breasts, the rudiments
of limbs. How many species had had to

perish for this peerless creature? Or
in it had their origin? But the time
has come for consumption. Uncertain moment:

the chef was faced with a culinary enigma.
How to prepare what’s never been prepared
and in itself is seemingly complete?

Poach, braise or marinate? Superfluous,
an insult. And what then? Do you keep things
simple with seaweed and slivers on toast

or does this call for a complex brandade
for the more demanding stomach? Raw, unsliced
it became, with ostrich egg and shoveller roulade.

Even the sploshing ice-cube water
halts at the point of pouring.
Then the first elected eater places

the first forkful in his mouth. He chews
in silence and unparalleled abandonment. Then
starts to utter ghastly screams. Revulsion,

ecstasy perhaps? He dances round for minutes,
subsiding into baffled staring. Even
after the babas he can’t speak about it.