Romenu

De Amerikaanse dichter Irwin Allen Ginsberg werd geboren in Newark, New Jersey, op 3 juni 1926. Zie ook alle tags voor Allen Ginsberg op dit blog.

Father Death Blues

Hey Father Death, I'm flying home
Hey poor man, you're all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

Father Death, Don't cry any more
Mama's there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest

Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body's gone
Father Death I'm coming home

Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues

Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we'll work it through

Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.

First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels

Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

Allen Ginsberg (3 juni 1926 - 6 april 1997)

De Oostenrijkse schrijver Norbert Gstrein werd geboren op 3 juni 1961 in Mils bei Imst, Tirol. Zie ook alle tags voor Norbert Gstrein op dit blog.

Uit: Die Winter im Süden

„Obwohl sie zu Hause längst schon getrennt schliefen, nahmen sie sich für diese paar Tage ein gemeinsames Zimmer, und am Ende lohnte sie ihm seine Anstrengungen, ihr zu zeigen, wie sehr er sie immer noch begehrte, beugte sich über ihn, erweckte mit ein paar Handgriffen den verschlafenen Wurm zum Leben, dem sie früher einmal wie eine Schlangenbeschwörerin die zärtlichsten Namen gegeben hatte, und hörte erst auf, sich an ihm abzumühen, als er sich mit ein paar schlaffen Zuckungen blind in ihren Mund ergoß. Damit hatte sie es hinter sich, denn er entschuldigte sich umständlich dafür, wie er es immer getan hatte, wenn es ihm nicht gelungen war, sich ihr rechtzeitig

zu entziehen, und wußte am nächsten Morgen nicht mehr, wie er sie anschauen sollte, warf ihr verstohlen die verzweifelten Blicke des Internatsschülers zu, der er einmal gewesen war, und

alberte mit den jungen Engländerinnen herum, mit denen sie sich in ihrem Hotel den Frühstücksraum teilten, während sie still neben ihm saß und dachte, was war seine Sehnsucht schon

gegen ihre, sie hätte den überkandidelten Damen folgen können, wenn sie sich später mit großen, ganz und gar unzeitgemäßen Hüten aufmachten, die Insel zu erkunden, und einen Tag

lang wieder ein Mädchen sein.

Zurück in Wien, ließ sie ein paar Monate verstreichen und erkundigte sich schließlich mehr, um ihm zu schmeicheln, als daß sie es wirklich hätte wissen wollen, warum er abends so viel außer Haus sei. Es wäre für sie keine Katastrophe gewesen, die Wahrheit zu erfahren, und sie sah ihm zu, wie er sich wand, bis er soweit war, sich alles von ihr anzuhören. Dann fragte sie ihn, ob er etwas dagegen hätte, wenn sie eine Weile nach Zagreb ginge, und ärgerte sich darüber, daß sie es in derselben Sekunde

auch schon abschwächte.

»Es wäre nur für den Sommer.«

Norbert Gstrein (Mils, 3 juni 1961)

De Domicaanse dichter en schrijver Pedro Mir werd op 3 juni 1913 in San Pedro de Macorís geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Pedro Mir op dit blog.

Uit: Countersong to Walt Whitman (Vertaald door Jonathan Cohen)

17

Why did you want to listen to a poet?
I am speaking to one and all.
To those of you who came to isolate him from his people,
to separate him from his blood and his land,
to flood his road.
Those of you who drafted him into the army.
The ones who defiled his luminous beard and put a gun
on his shoulders that were loaded with maidens and pioneers.
Those of you who do not want Walt Whitman, the democrat,
but another Whitman, atomic and savage.
The ones who want to outfit him with boots
to crush the heads of nations.
To grind into blood the temples of little girls.
To smash into atoms the old man's flesh.
The ones who take the tongue of Walt Whitman
for a sign of spraying bullets,
for a flag of fire.
No, Walt Whitman, here are the poets of today
aroused to justify you!
Poets to come! … Arouse! for you must justify me.
Here we are, Walt Whitman, to justify you.
Here we are
for your sake
demanding peace.
The peace you needed
to drive the world with your song.
Here we are
saving your hills of Vermont,
your woods of Maine, the sap and fragrance of your land,
your spurred rowdies, your smiling maidens,
your country boys walking to creeks.
Saving them, Walt Whitman, from the tycoons
who take your language for the language of war.
No, Walt Whitman, here are the poets of today,
the workers of today, the pioneers of today, the peasants
of today,
firm and roused to justify you!
O Walt Whitman of aroused beard!
Here we are without beards,
without arms, without ears,
without any strength in our lips,
spied on,
red and persecuted,
full of eyes
wide open throughout the islands,
full of courage, of knots of pride
untied through all the nations,
with your sign and your language, Walt Whitman,
here we are
standing up
to justify you,
our constant companion
of Manhattan!

Pedro Mir (3 juni 1913 – 11 juli 2000)

De Duitse schrijver en literatuurcriticus Marcel Reich-Ranicki werd geboren op 2 juni 1920 in Włocławek, Polen. Zie ook alle tags voor Marcel Reich-Ranicki op dit blog.

Uit: Mein Leben

„Es war Ende Oktober 1958 auf einer Tagung der “Gruppe 47” in der Ortschaft Grosholzleute im Allgau. Von den hier versammelten Schriftstellern kannte ich nur wenige – kein Wunder, denn ich lebte erst seit drei Monaten wieder in dem Land, aus dem mich die deutschen Behörden im Herbst 1938 deportiert hatten. Jedenfalls fuhlte ich mich bei dieser Tagung isoliert; und so war es mir nicht unrecht, das in der Mittagspause ein jungerer deutscher Autor, mit dem ich mich im vergangenen Fruhjahr in Warschau unterhalten hatte, auf mich zukam. Noch wuste ich nicht, das schon am nachsten Tag, mit dem ihm verliehenen Preis der “Gruppe 47”, sein steiler Aufstieg zum Weltruhm beginnen sollte.

Dieser kraftige junge Mann, selbstsicher und etwas aufmupfig, verwickelte mich nun in ein Gesprach. Nach einem kurzen Wortwechsel bedrangte er mich plotzlich mit einer einfachen Frage. Noch niemand hatte mir, seit ich wieder in Deutschland war, diese Frage so direkt und so ungeniert gestellt.

Er, Gunter Grass aus Danzig, wollte namlich von mir wissen: “Was sind Sie denn nun eigentlich – ein Pole, ein Deutscher oder wie?” Die Worte “oder wie” deuteten wohl noch auf eine dritte Moglichkeit hin. Ich antwortete rasch: “Ich bin ein halber Pole, ein halber Deutscher und ein ganzer Jude.” Grass schien uberrascht, doch war er offensichtlich zufrieden, ja beinahe entzuckt: “Kein Wort mehr, Sie konnten dieses schone Bonmot nur verderben.” Auch ich fand meine spontane Auserung ganz hubsch, aber eben nur hubsch. Denn diese arithmetische Formel war so effektvoll wie unaufrichtig: Hier stimmte kein einziges Wort.

Nie war ich ein halber Pole, nie ein halber Deutscher – und ich hatte keinen Zweifel, das ich es nie werden wurde. Ich war auch nie in meinem Leben ein ganzer Jude, ich bin es auch heute nicht.“

Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Włocławek, 2 juni 1920)

De Franse schrijver en journalist Patrick Besson werd geboren op 1 juni 1956 in Montreuil. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 juni 2009 en alle tags voor Patrick Besson op dit blog.

Uit: And The River Will Kill The White Man (Vertaald door Edward Gauvin)

„I recognized her in line at customs, though the only photo of her ever to appear in the papers was from 1985. She was dressed like a man, like when she’d been arrested last century. Her short hair was gray now. Behind round lenses in a steely, Trotskyesque frame, glasses all nearsighted girls of her generation wore—they’d stopped, why hadn’t she?—you saw the same big empty eyes, fearful, roving. Her line was moving faster than mine. She must have read the clothes, the carriage, the carry-ons, the faces of everyone waiting to pass customs. Gauged the chances each did or didn’t have of being detained by an official. Then made a quick mental reckoning and picked the right line. This bit of work had given her a few minutes’ lead. The minutes that sometimes save your life. I lost sight of her, then found her again in the lounge. She was traveling business class, like me. I was in oil. What was she in now?

When I realized we were on the same flight, I thought perhaps we’d be seated side by side. She’d get the vague and plaintive gaze of a famous person wondering if you knew who they were. When it came to notoriety from a shocking news story, an unspeakable political act, or a catastrophic military operation, such silent questioning grew tinged with fear and shame. Alas, the cabin crew gestured us to different rows. Why alas? It was better this way. If I’d been seated next to her for several hours, I would’ve wound up asking her questions she wouldn’t have answered. If she were even the same Blandine de Kergalec who’d once made the headlines. Hard as Breton granite, the editorialists had said in their usual style. She sat down on the other side of the plane, two rows back. She was by the window. For a few moments she kept her purse on her knees, as though she had doubts about wanting to reach her destination, then slipped it under her seat. She had no book, no IPod, no DVD player. She’d spend the six hours thinking, like anyone beset by an obsession. Had she noticed I was watching her? Her way of not seeing me made me think so.

A frail figure slipped past my knees, followed by a slight sigh to my right: the tiny wisp of a creature had sat down. A runny suit streamed down his nonexistent shoulders. He introduced himself. Passengers in business class introduce themselves, to do business. He was an advisor to African presidents. Advisors to African presidents are interested in oil men, and oil men in advisors to African presidents. They practice a single profession in Africa: bleeding it dry.[…] ’’

 

Patrick Besson (Montreuil, 1 juni 1956)

De Amerikaanse dichter Walt Whitman werd geboren op 31 mei 1819 in Westhills, Long Island, New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Whalt Whitman op dit blog.

Facing west from California's shores

FACING west from California's shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,

Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?)

Uit: Calamus Poems

2.

Scented herbage of my breast,
Leaves from you I yield, I write, to be perused best afterwards,
Tomb-leaves, body leaves, growing up above me, above death,
Perennial roots, tall leaves -- O the winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves,
Every year shall you bloom again -- Out from where you retired, you shall emerge again;
O I do not know whether many, passing by, will discover you, or inhale your faint odor -- but I believe a few will;
O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell, in your own way, of the heart that is under you,
O burning and throbbing -- surely all will one day be accomplished;
O I do not know what mean, there underneath yourselves -- you are not happiness,
You are often more bitter than I can bear -- you burn and sting me,

3.

1.

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.

2.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? Are you he?

3.

The way is suspicious -- the result slow, uncertain, may-be destructive;
You would have to give up all else -- I alone would expect to be your God, sole and exclusive,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have to be abandoned;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further -- Let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.

4.

Or else, only by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in open air,
(for in any roofed room of a house I emerge not -- nor in company,
And in the libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill -- first watching lest any person, for miles around, approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss,
For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade

Walt Whitman (31 mei 1819 – 26 maart 1893)

Hier met vriend Bill Duckett, rond 1886

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Elizabeth Alexander werd geboren op 30 mei 1962 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Elizabeth Alexander op dit blog.

Autumn Passage

On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.

On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”

“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,

September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,

glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates

even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns

florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.

Islands Number Four

1.

Agnes Martin, Islands Number Four,

Repeated ovals on a grid, what appears

To be perfect is handmade, disturbed.

Tobacco brown saturates canvas to burlap,

Clean form from a distance, up close, her hand.

All wrack and bramble to oval and grid.

Hollows in the body, containers for grief.

What looks to be perfect is not perfect.

Odd oval portholes that flood with light.

2.

Description of a Slave Ship, 1789:

Same imperfect ovals, calligraphic hand.

At a distance, pattern. Up close, bodies

Doubled and doubled, serried and stacked

In the manner of galleries in a church,

In full ships on their sides or on each other.

Isle of woe, two-by-two, spoon-fashion,

Not unfrequently found dead in the morning.

Slave ships, the not pure, imperfect ovals,

Portholes through which they would never see home,

The flesh rubbed off their shoulders, elbows, hips.

Barracoon, sarcophagus, indestructible grief

Nesting in the hollows of the abdomen.

The slave ship empty, its cargo landed

And sold for twelve ounces of gold apiece

Or gone overboard. Islands. Aftermath.

Elizabeth Alexander (New York, 30 mei 1962)

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Martin Jankowski werd op 29 mei 1965 in Greifswald geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin Jankowski op dit blog.

anflug auf yogya

rechts das meer und links die grünen hügel
wir lachen und legen uns elegant in die kurve
eine kette rauchender vulkane taucht auf
eine armlänge vom flugzeugfenster entfernt
steck ich die hand in den dampf und lege
eine handvoll funkelnder rubine in deinen schoß

zwischen vulkankegeln wimmelt häuserschaum
wir zielen in seine schattige mitte

alles scheint fruchtbarer hier
der boden das lächeln die luft
und wenn ein erdbeben käme
oder die vulkane alle zugleich
in wildem übermut das flimmern
der stadt und das land auslöschten
hätten wir mühsam wie alle gelebt
doch näher am glück

sieh nur der mond
wird zornig rot spielt
schattenspiele mit den wolken

Martin Jankowski (Greifswald, 29 mei 1965)

De Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijver André Brink werd geboren op 29 mei 1935 in Vrede. Zie ook alle tags voor André Brink op dit blog.

Uit: Surprise Visit

“He never really learnt to cope with that. The only constant in those years was Mum. His father was always more of an absence than a presence. But Mum, yes, she made the difference. Which was why he finally had to make the effort to come all this way to see her. For the last time? Before he went to the States he had already paid her a number of visits, of which each could have been the last. But she held on. Not without some perversity, he sometimes thought. Always a contrary old bird.

He walks down the passage, his rubber soles squeaking on the green linoleum. Down to the end, Jolene has said, then sharp left. Into a small, undefined kind of space which may once have been a storeroom, when the old red-brick building was still a girls’ school. He had actually come here two or three times during his university years, when the girls put on the plays indefatigably penned and produced by the Welshman who taught English and with whom he’d struck up some kind of easy-going friendship. It was mainly cricket that had brought the two of them together. But for some time, at least a year or so, the prof’s daughter had provided an additional attraction. She was still at this school then and acted in a couple of her father’s plays. A fiery little thing, provocatively pretty. And the plays, invariably crackling with Gaelic magic, heightened her attraction. What was the last one? Of course: The Isles of the Blest, when after the show he and she slipped along some corridor into a secluded lobby at the end, which might have been this very space, and briefly wrought their own magic until they were interrupted, at the critical moment, by the avenging fury of a principal.

Three doors lead from here. The middle one must be the one he is looking for, if Jolene is to be believed. Opening into what resembles the waiting room of a railway station. Even smelling like one. Except that this one, large and lugubrious, has darker undertones. What must undoubtedly be the smell of death. When one ends up here there are no further shifts or moves to be expected. It is the ultimate Waiting Room. From here there are only the few steps to the hearse at the door. Abandon all hope, ye who enter. Or something to that effect.”

André Brink (Vrede, 29 mei 1935)

Prettige Pinksterdagen!

De Nederdaling van de Heilige Geest

Ikoon uit de Noordrussische School

Pentecost

Better a jungle in the head
than rootless concrete.
Better to stand bewildered
by the fireflies' crooked street;

winter lamps do not show
where the sidewalk is lost,
nor can these tongues of snow
speak for the Holy Ghost;

the self-increasing silence
of words dropped from a roof
points along iron railings,
direction, in not proof.

But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul.

Derek Walcott (St. Lucia, 23 januari 1930)