Time for a 'Tachtiger'! No. 31 Willem Kloos

De bomen dorren in het laat seizoen

De bomen dorren in het laat seizoen,
En wachten roerloos den nabijen winter...
Wat is dat alles stil, doodstil... ik vind er
Mijn eigen leven in, dat heen gaat spoên.

Ach, 'k had zo graag heel, héél veel willen doen,
Wat Verzen en wat Liefde, -- want wie mint er
Te sterven zonder dees? Maar wie ook wint er
Ter wereld iets door klagen of door woên?

Ik ga dan stil, tevreden en gedwee,
En neem geen ding uit al dat Leven meê
Dan dees gedachte, gonzende in mij om:

Men moet niet van het lieve Dood-zijn ijzen:
De dode bloemen komen niet weêrom,
Maar Ik zal heerlijk in mijn Vers herrijzen.

The trees are wilting at the season’s end

The trees are wilting at the season’s end,

Awaiting motionless the approaching winter

How still it all is, deathly still... The stint of

My own brief life’s contained there, almost spent.

Ah, much, so much I dearly would have done,

Some Verses and some Love, – for who is eager

Without them to face death? But who by meagre

Rage or complaint has something ever won?

Contented, still and meek I now will be,

And nothing from that Life I take with me

Than this thought that is pounding in my brain:

One need not shudder at one’s own fond Death:

The dead flowers will not ever come again,

But I will in my Verse once more draw breath.

'Concerning everything that still hovers' - another poem by Lars Gustafsson

Concerning everything that still hovers

As yet my grave is nowhere visible.

And thus I too am hovering:

resting, myself, unknowing,

I too in a sea of air, an atmosphere.

Floating with the floating,

living with the living,

resting with the resting,

and, perhaps also, without knowing it,

dead with the dead.

There is no word for this:

it is a way of hovering.

‘In the Sea of Air’ like the aeronauts of old,

and this sea you are yourself.

Once, in Texas, at six o’clock in the morning,

swimming across the crystal-clear water

of a very deep swimming pool

actually meant for high-divers,

swimming to me suddenly turned to flying.

Gazing down through the goggles’ small windows

to the well-cleaned black and white squares below,

from exactly the height where one no longer survives

in a free fall, I could for an instant vaguely sense:

To constantly be falling, be in one’s fall

and yet to fly, borne by something invisible.

We see through and smile at the old painters

and their childish trick

of placing some birds deep in the picture,

very small, floating like meaningless signs

between earth and air, between light and dark,

between water and land, in short,

the kind of things that exist between the differences,

the twilight things that create the depth

which linear perspective on its own cannot achieve.

So do all mortals float within

their own picture, somewhere in the twilight,

and for this floating there is no name.

So too do signs float over the white sheets of paper,

the rooks over the snow, the good over evil time.

So does everything float. It stands like the angels stand,

in unprecedented motion.

And for the world’s flight there is no name.

Ice sonnet from Lars Gustafsson

Sonnet XXVII

To one below the surface of the ice

the ice itself looks as if something white

and openings and wind wells where still quite

open water moves look, if there’s a slice

of daylight left, as if expanses fraught

with darkness. And only he who knows aright

an exit lies in what is dark, that white

means darkness (that ice can so distort

conditions as they’re pictured by the eye)

and who, against his instinct, swims away

from light towards the dark sees day again.

There is, once a small habit stirs, or by

a word that changes meaning, a chance, though stray,

of someone getting out. That he sees day again.

Amazing sequence from 'Selfies' section of 'Legacy' by Klaus Høeck

       the only oil paint

ing that exists with me as

       a motif lay for

       many years with the

picture surface downwards un

       der an ottoman

       (put in the doghouse)

after all you can’t have your

       self hanging on a

       wall in your own home

monitoring everything

       that is taking place

       my head pops up in

the picture against a sky

       of green chirico

       as a contrast to

the gasometer from øst

       re gasværk where a

       guardian angel

of marble stands guard over

       me there are scratches

       and crackles in the

paint and behind the canvas

       a pulse is beating

       self-portrait with a

mini-pancake pan made of

       copper self-portrait

       with heinz tomato

ketchup self-portrait with lent

       barrel self-portrait

       with elastoplast

self-portrait with papercut

       ting of the derby

       winner patricia

garbo self-portrait with a

       painting of myself

       later the portrait

stood wrapped up in black plas

       tic like a deep and

       profound secret in

a toolshed – it was painted

       by bispelund knud

       sen sometime in the

nineteen seventies and at

       it can now be found

       in the portrait col

lection depot at frede

       riksborg museum

       i place a copy

of myself at the foot of

       a large copper beech

       tree in stingsted sko

ven (there where the former small

       holding still stands) so

       that i can ima

gine to myself that i can

       hear the night wind in

       side my own head as

something different and more

       than just a gimmick

       a second copy

of the same picture i wrap

       up in a piece of

       aluminium

foil along with one of the

       thirty-two heartstones

       and throw it into

the sea at fogense not

       only so that i

       can sleep together

with the fishes – listen – how

       deep is the poem?

       a third copy i

set fire to on the neighbour’s

       garden bonfire u

       nite my likeness with

hawthorn and poplar with smoke

       fire and ashes

       that fly off across

the spring fields in a stunt that

       perhaps asserts the

       very resurrec

tion or the recycling of

       the poem itself

       then all i’m lacking

is earth – but that’s easy e

       nough i dig a coup

       le of spits down in

heartland and then place the fi

       nal copy of the

       portrait (the poem

as a whole in the ground) the

       exact gps coor

       dinates only to

be published at a later

       date (after my death)

       the original

can still be seen but i won’t

       tell you where you’ll have

       to find it for your

self if you’ve the time and in

       clination as with

       all poetry but

the code word’s: köpenhamn and

       the year seventy

       eight where i look up

at you with an inscruta

       ble gaze from the dark