November: "No Trespassing" and the Skies of Fall
(click on photo to enlarge)
No Trespassing
"My father sat more than an hour in /
   silence next to my bed.
After he had put on his hat
I said, now, this conversation
will be easy to resume.
No, he said, not at all,
you should try it sometime."


from Hospital Visit, a poem
by
Judith Herzberg 

This week, an image from tallgrass prairie
country in North America,
"No Trespassing".
Also: five
new translations of Lowland poems.


Vijf Gedichten; FivePoems

The guest poems for this week are new English translations of a set of five Dutch pieces.
The featured poets are, M. Vasalis, Ed. Hoornik,
Simon Vestdijk, Willem Frederik
Hermans
and Judith Herzberg.



Titles as Frames around Open Space

One thing pictures and poems certainly have in common is their
frames. The visual image necessarily is limited in some way by
borders, whereas a poem, insofar as its content points us in a
certain direction, or has a particular focus, at least implies
a title even if it doesn't have one. The title/frame sets the tone,
awakens expectations, directs our attention in different ways by
the quality of space it creates.

This week I've brought together five new translations of shorter
Dutch poems. With the title
October, M. Vasalis instantly grounds
the piece in the age old tradition of marking the passage of the natural
year in verse. "Something so known," —it's true, even a child living in
the Northern latitudes has seen more than a handful of autumns come
and go. But at the same time the movement into winter remains
to many of us both mysterious and, as we grow older, open to different
interpretations. "And so undone of all conflict" is an interesting
thought to ponder as one takes it out of the poem and tucks it away
in an old coat pocket like an acorn found on a forest path.

Ed. Hoornik with
The Birds takes us by surprise in a charming way.
Yes, another traditional theme, but now, more about how the sound of birds
singing changes over time as two lovers grow closer to one another.

Simon Vestdijk's
Edge of Myself—the Dutch title Zelfkant literally
means 'Self-edge'—is a slow-moving, camera-like description of a place,
a moment, which the poet has happened upon. Not far from town—
in Holland, one is never far from town—but still he finds a certain
wilderness-like solitude there in the way that it has been forgotten.
A beautiful touch in the last stanza is how the poem comes round
in self-reference: "And the black calf in the meadow at the edge /Is
set free by an unlooked for poem /And with the cinders with but
one image taken in."
It is as if he is asking, where does he, the observer,
end and the countryside/the poem begin?

With the title
Night Thoughts offered to us by Willem Frederik Hermans
we are instantly prepared for the fragmentary if not surreal. After a
quick sketch with a few sharp contrasts he leaves us with the thought of
growth happening late—late in the day, in a season, in a life.

And finally, Judith Herberg concludes our quintet of poems with her
piece,
Hospital Visit. The title opens upon a space well-known to
us all, and
also for many of us filled with more than a little fear
and tragedy, so we're pleased with her charming matter-of-fact
anecdote—Dutch is a wonderful language for this kind of straight
forward, light-footed verse—in which her father we hope, "you should
try it sometime...,"
leaves the space with a smile:








October

Teeder en jong, als werd het voorjaar
maar lichter nog, want zonder vruchtbegin,
met dunne mist tusschen de gele blaren
zet stil het herfstgetijde in.

Ik voel alleen, dat ik bemin,
zooals een kind, iets jongs, iets ouds,
eind of begin? Iets zo vertrouwds
en zoo van alle strijd ontheven—
niet als een einde van het leven,
maar als de lente van den dood.

De kruinen ijl, de stammen bloot
en dit door stilte en mist omgeven.

    M. Vasalis
(1909-1998)
October

Tender and young, as if it were spring
but lighter yet, not burdened with new fruit,
with thin mist between the yellow leaves,
quietly the time of fall begins.

I feel alone, that I love
like a child, something young, something old,
end or beginning? Something so known
and so undone of all conflict—
not as an end of life,
but as the spring of death.

The rarefied crowns, the naked trunks,
and this surrounded by silence and mist.





De Vogels

Er waren altijd vogels in je tuin.
We keken hoe de dikke duif kwam baden
en in de vijver daalde, steen voor steen.

Aanvanklijk was je net als ik verlegen;
de vogels hielpen ons eroverheen,
de vogels, ja, maar die toch niet alleen.

Wat dan? Het kattekwaad dat we verzonnen,
wanneer je vrouw op het gazon verscheen
en van het puurst geluk je ogen glommen?

Of't samenzitten als de zon verdween,
de vogels slechts bij tussenpozen zongen
en niet meer tegelijk, maar één voor één?

   Ed. Hoornik
(1910-1970)
The Birds

There were always birds in the garden.
We watched how the plump dove came to bathe
and sank into the pond, stone by stone.

At first you were just as shy as me;
the birds helped us get over that,
the birds, yes, but not only them.

What then? The mischief we came up with,
like when your wife appeared on the lawn
and your eyes shone with the purest joy?

Or sitting together as the sun disappeared,
the birds singing only now and then
and no longer all together, but one by one?





Zelfkant

Ik houd het meest van halfland'lijkheid:
Van vage weidewinden die met lijnen
Vol waschgoed spelen; van fabrieksterreinen
Waar tusschen arm'lijk gras de lorrie rijdt,

Bevracht met het geheim der dokspoorlijnen.
Want 'k weet, er is daar waar men 't leven slijt
En toch niet leeft, zwervend meer eenzaamheid
Te vinden dan in bergen of ravijnen.

De walm van stoomtram en van bleekerij
Of van de ovens waar men schelpen brandt
Is meer dan thijmgeur aanstichter van droomen,

En 't zwarte kalf in 't weitje aan den rand
Wordt door een onverhoopt gedicht bevrijd
En in één beeld met sintels opgenomen.

   Simon Vestdijk
(1898-1971)
   uit:
Kind van Stad en Land (1936)
Edge of Myself

The half-rural countryside I love the most:
The vague pasture winds that play
With the wash on the lines; the factory lots
Where between the dry grass trains go about,

Laden with the secrets of tracks on a pier.
Because I know, that there life is worn down,
And yet doesn't live, drifting, finding more
Solitude than in mountains or ravines.

The smoke from steam trollies and bleach factory,
Or the ovens where they burn the shells,
More than the smell of thyme, are kindlers of dreams,

And the black calf in the meadow at the edge
Is set free by an unlooked for poem
And with the cinders with but one image taken in.





Nachtgedachte

De zon was zo fel
Dat ik niets kon zien dan zwart
En wit.
Dat ik mijzelf
Slechts aan mijn schaduw mat.
De zon stond zo hoog
Dat ik bijna geen schaduw had.
En daarom ben ik overdag zo klein en mooi
Ik, die pas bij het later worden groei.

   Willem Frederik Hermans
(1921-1995)
Night Thoughts

The sun was so intense
That I could see nothing but black
and white.
That I myself
only by my shadow measured.
The sun stood so high
That I hardly had a shadow.
And hence during the day I'm so /
    small and beautiful
I, who only as it gets later grow.






Ziekenbezoek

Mijn vader had een lang uur zitten /
   zwijgen bij mijn bed.
Toen hij zijn hoed had opgezet
zei ik, nou, dit gesprek
is makkelijk te resumeren.
Nee, zei hij, nee toch niet
je moet het maar eens proberen.

   Judith Herzberg
(1934)
Hospital Visit

My father sat more than an hour in /
   silence next to my bed.
After he had put on his hat
I said, now, this conversation
will be easy to resume.
No, he said, not at all,
you should try it sometime.


(all tr. Cliff Crego)









| view / print Picture/Poem Poster:
Vasalis October
 pdf (63 K) |


See
also:

new
"Straight roads,
Slow rivers,
Deep clay."
A collection of contemporary Dutch poetry
in English translation, with commentary
and photographs
by Cliff Crego


| See also a selection of recent Picture/Poem "Rilke in translation" features at the Rilke Archive.

See also another website
by Cliff Crego:
The Poetry of
Rainer Maria Rilke
A presentation of 80 of the
best poems of Rilke in
both German and
new English translations
:
biography, links, posters


| # listen to other recordings in English and German of eight poems from
The Book of Images
at The Rilke Download Page (# Includes instructions)
|
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Photograph/Texts of Translations © 2000 Cliff Crego
(created
X. 1..2000) Comments to crego@picture-poems.com