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Voyages
I
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
The waves fold thunder on the sand;
And could they hear me I would tell them:
O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
By time and the elements; but there is a line
You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
The bottom of the sea is cruel.
II
—And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;
Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.
And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.
Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.
Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
III
Infinite consanguinity it bears—
This tendered theme of you that light
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
While ribboned water lanes I wind
Are laved and scattered with no stroke
Wide from your side, whereto this hour
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black swollen gates
That must arrest all distance otherwise,—
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
Your body rocking!
and where death, if shed,
Presumes no carnage, but this single change,—
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
The silken skilled transmemberment of song;
Permit me voyage, love, into your hands …
IV
Whose counted smile of hours and days, suppose
I know as spectrum of the sea and pledge
Vastly now parting gulf on gulf of wings
Whose circles bridge, I know,
(from palms to the severe
Chilled albatross’s white immutability)
No stream of greater love advancing now
Than, singing, this mortality alone
Through clay aflow immortally to you.
All fragrance irrefragably, and claim
Madly meeting logically in this hour
And region that is ours to wreathe again,
Portending eyes and lips and making told
The chancel port and portion of our June—
Shall they not stem and close in our own steps
Bright staves of flowers and quills today as I
Must first be lost in fatal tides to tell?
In signature of the incarnate word
The harbor shoulders to resign in mingling
Mutual blood, transpiring as foreknown
And widening noon within your breast for gathering
All bright insinuations that my years have caught
For islands where must lead inviolably
Blue latitudes and levels of your eyes,—
In this expectant, still exclaim receive
The secret oar and petals of all love.
V
Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
Together in one merciless white blade—
The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.
—As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,
Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
One frozen trackless smile … What words
Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we
Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
And changed … “There’s
Nothing like this in the world,” you say,
Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
Too, into that godless cleft of sky
Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.
“—And never to quite understand!” No,
In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
Nothing so flagless as this piracy.
But now
Draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.
VI
Where icy and bright dungeons lift
Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
And ocean rivers, churning, shift
Green borders under stranger skies,
Steadily as a shell secretes
Its beating leagues of monotone,
Or as many waters trough the sun’s
Red kelson past the cape’s wet stone;
O rivers mingling toward the sky
And harbor of the phoenix’ breast—
My eyes pressed black against the prow,
—Thy derelict and blinded guest
Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke,
I cannot claim: let thy waves rear
More savage than the death of kings,
Some splintered garland for the seer.
Beyond siroccos harvesting
The solstice thunders, crept away,
Like a cliff swinging or a sail
Flung into April’s inmost day—
Creation’s blithe and petalled word
To the lounged goddess when she rose
Conceding dialogue with eyes
That smile unsearchable repose—
Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
—Unfolded floating dais before
Which rainbows twine continual hair—
Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!
The imaged Word, it is, that holds
Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply
Whose accent no farewell can know.
Hart Crane
(1899—1932)
Voyages
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The Lonely Death
In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them a-flame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.
Adelaide Crapsey
(1878—1914)
The Lonely Death
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Trapped
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year. . and ever days and years. .
Well?
Adelaide Crapsey
(1878—1914)
Trapped
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“Behold, the grave of a wicked man”
Behold, the grave of a wicked man,
And near it, a stern spirit.
There came a drooping maid with violets,
But the spirit grasped her arm.
“No flowers for him,” he said.
The maid wept:
“Ah, I loved him.”
But the spirit, grim and frowning:
“No flowers for him.”
Now, this is it —
If the spirit was just,
Why did the maid weep?
Stephen Crane
(1871—1900)
“Behold, the grave of a wicked man”
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Amaze
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Adelaide Crapsey
(1878—1914)
Amaze
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ARK presenteert met de duo-tentoonstelling Schemergebied van Maartje Korstanje en Vince Donders twee beeldhouwers die ieder vanuit een uitgesproken engagement op poëtische wijze reflecteren op de relatie tussen mens en natuur. Hun werk deelt een fascinatie voor processen van transformatie en beweegt zich tussen groei en verval, constructie en destructie, leven en vergankelijkheid.
Maartje Korstanje (Goes, 1982) maakt sculpturen en installaties van veelal natuurlijke materialen zoals klei, karton en textiel. In haar werk onderzoekt zij hoe organische vormen ontstaan, vergaan en opnieuw gestalte aannemen. Haar sculpturen lijken het tastbare eindpunt van een groeiproces — kwetsbaar, maar vitaal en resoneren met het denken rond het symbioceen, waarin samenwerking tussen mens en andere levensvormen centraal staat.
Vince Donders (Tilburg, 1991) construeert installaties van afval en industrieel rest- en constructiemateriaal. Thema’s als overconsumptie, ecologische uitputting en veerkracht vormen zijn uitgangspunt. Zijn werken zijn onheilspellend, dystopisch van aard en balanceren tussen postindustriële archeologie en sciencefiction.
In deze duo-presentatie ontmoeten hun werelden elkaar: beide kunstenaars bewegen zich op het grensvlak van ecologie en verbeelding. Samen creëren zij bij PARK een gelaagde omgeving waarin synthetisch en organisch, heden en toekomst, afbraak en schepping in elkaars verlengde liggen. Hun werk nodigt uit tot reflectie op de rol van de mens binnen een voortdurend veranderende wereld.
SCHEMERGEBIED
tentoonstelling Vince Donders en Maartje Korstanje
21.02.2026 tot 05.04 2026
PARK
Wilhelminapark 53, 5041 ED Tilburg
park(at)park013.nl
Facebook.com/Park013
https://www.instagram.com/park_tilburg/
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We Wear the Mask
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
(1872—1906)
We Wear the Mask
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“Once there came a man”
Once there came a man
Who said:
“Range me all men of the world in rows.”
And instantly
There was a terrific clamor among the people
Against being ranged in rows.
There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.
It endured for ages;
And blood was shed
By those who would not stand in rows,
And by those who pined to stand in rows.
Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.
And those who stayed in the bloody scuffle
Knew not the great simplicity.
Stephen Crane
(1871—1900)
“Once there came a man”
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Niagara
Seen on a Night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
Adelaide Crapsey
(1878—1914)
Niagara
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I heard a Fly buzz
– when I died –
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
Emily Dickinson
(1830—1886)
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
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The Lover and the Moon
A lover whom duty called over the wave,
With himself communed: “Will my love be true
If left to herself? Had I better not sue
Some friend to watch over her, good and grave?
But my friend might fail in my need,” he said,
“And I return to find love dead.
Since friendships fade like the flow’rs of June,
I will leave her in charge of the stable moon.”
Then he said to the moon: “O dear old moon,
Who for years and years from thy throne above
Hast nurtured and guarded young lovers and love,
My heart has but come to its waiting June,
And the promise time of the budding vine;
Oh, guard thee well this love of mine.”
And he harked him then while all was still,
And the pale moon answered and said, ‘I will.’
And he sailed in his ship o’er many seas,
And he wandered wide o’er strange far strands:
in isles of the south and in Orient lands,
Where pestilence lurks in the breath of the breeze.
But his star was high, so he braved the main,
And sailed him blithely home again;
And with joy he bended his footsteps soon
To learn of his love from the matron moon.
She sat as of yore, in her olden place,
Serene as death, in her silver chair.
A white rose gleamed in her whiter hair,
And the tint of a blush was on her face.
At sight of the youth she sadly bowed
And hid her face ’neath a gracious cloud.
She faltered faint on the night’s dim marge,
But “How,” spoke the youth, “have you kept your charge?”
The moon was sad at a trust ill-kept;
The blush went out in her blanching cheek,
And her voice was timid and low and weak,
As she made her plea and sighed and wept.
“Oh, another prayed and another plead,
And I couldn’t resist,” she answering said;
“But love still grows in the hearts of men:
Go forth, dear youth, and love again.”
But he turned him away from her proffered grace.
“Thou art false, O moon, as the hearts of men,
I will not, will not love again.”
And he turned sheer ’round with a soul-sick face
To the sea, and cried: “Sea, curse the moon,
Who makes her vows and forgets so soon.”
And the awful sea with anger stirred,
And his breast heaved hard as he lay and heard.
And ever the moon wept down in rain,
And ever her sighs rose high in wind;
But the earth and sea were deaf and blind,
And she wept and sighed her griefs in vain.
And ever at night, when the storm is fierce,
The cries of a wraith through the thunders pierce;
And the waves strain their awful hands on high
To tear the false moon from the sky.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
(1872 – 1906)
The Lover and the Moon
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Depuis qu’il a survécu à une fièvre mortelle, personne n’a vu son visage.
Chaque nuit, l’enfant quitte le presbytère où il a été recueilli et s’enfonce dans les bois. Sous la lune, la forêt devient son territoire. Cette vie clandestine le protège du regard des autres.
Alors qu’il entre dans l’adolescence, une jeune fille apparaît parmi les arbres. Elle ne ressemble en rien aux habitants de ce village perdu, hanté par des haines ancestrales. Mais elle aussi porte un secret et rêve d’échapper à l’avenir qui lui est promis.
Le Visage de la nuit est un roman éblouissant, traversé d’éclairs sur l’adolescence, la violence et le désir.
Née en 1990, Cécile Coulon consacre sa thèse de Lettres Modernes au « Sport et à la littérature ». “Le Roi n’a pas sommeil” a obtenu le Prix Mauvais Genres France Culture / Le Nouvel Observateur 2012, et s’est vendu à près de 20 000 exemplaires. Avec “Le Rire du grand blessé”, en 2013, elle nous a offert une fable d’anticipation sur la place de la littérature dans notre société. Elle est considérée comme l’une des voix les plus prometteuses de sa génération.
Cécile Coulon: « une sacrée raconteuse d’histoire » – Le Figaro littéraire
Cécile Coulon:
Le Visage de la nuit
Grand livre
Éditeur: Iconoclaste
Date de publication: 8 janvier 2026
Langue: Français
ISBN-10: 2378805713
ISBN-13: 978-2378805715
Broché
€ 21,90
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