In this category:

    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    MODERN POETRY
    Bevers, Bert

New on FdM

  1. Song: ‘Sweetest love, I do not go’ by John Donne
  2. Michail Lermontov: Mijn dolk (Vertaling Paul Bezembinder)
  3. Anne Bradstreet: To My Dear and Loving Husband
  4. Emmy Hennings: Ein Traum
  5. Emma Doude Van Troostwijk premier roman: ¨Ceux qui appartiennent au jour”
  6. Marriage Morning by Alfred Lord Tennyson
  7. Christine de Pisan: Belle, ce que j’ay requis
  8. Marina Abramović in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
  9. Spring by Christina Georgina Rossetti
  10. Kira Wuck: Koeiendagen (Gedichten)

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (11)
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (59)
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (178)
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,497)
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,766)
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,689)
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,603)
  9. MONTAIGNE (110)
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter (177)
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (136)
  13. MUSIC (216)
  14. PRESS & PUBLISHING (90)
  15. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (111)
  16. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (16)
  17. STREET POETRY (46)
  18. THEATRE (185)
  19. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (347)
  20. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (222)
  21. WAR & PEACE (124)
  22. · (2)

Or see the index



  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

Bert Bevers gedicht: Veertig laarzen (Forty boots)

 

Veertig laarzen

Bij het bekijken van een krantenfoto

Twintig man. Arm-in-arm. Vondst bij graven
voor de bouw van een fabriek. Samen fluitend trokken
deze jongens vrolijk ooit het water over. Er moest
een Grote Oorlog, en zij, zij zouden daar wel even.

Door bakeliet van telefoons over de schans en kogels
tegemoet gestuurd hield voor hen, Arras in ’17,
het leven zomaar halt. Koppig bot dat gebroken wit
in van nog meer zwangere grond op later wachtte.

Onder verse klaver en bloeiende netel de blikken dood
naar boven gericht in leeggegeten kassen.
Nu van de aarde de opperhuid is weggeharkt,
liggen zij elleboog in elleboog een Holbein na te doen

met aan hun voeten nog in goede staat hun laarzen.

(Verschenen in In de buurt van de wereld, Bergen op Zoom,
Uitgeverij Kleinood & Grootzeer, 2002 , ISBN 90 76644 23 3)

 

Forty boots

On seeing a newspaper photograph

Twenty men. Arm in arm. A find on excavating
for the building of a factory. Whistling together
these lads cheerfully crossed the water. A Great War
had to be fought, and they, they were to do their bit.

Through bakelite of telephones over the top and
dispatched towards bullets, life for them, at Arras in ’17,
abruptly came to a halt. Patient bones that broken-white
in a ground fertile from yet more warfare waited for later.

Under fresh clover and flowering nettles their dead gaze
ever heavenward in eaten-away boxes.
Now the outer skin of the earth has been raked off,
they lie elbow to elbow imitating a Holbein

with on their feet – and still in good repair – their boots.

 

Bert Bevers: Veertig laarzen (Forty boots)
Vertaling: John Irons

kempis.nl poetry magazine

More in: Bevers, Bert

Previous and Next Entry

« | »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature