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Eenzame nacht waarin zuigelingen huilen
en ezelsveulens balken. De wind bijt in ’t bot.
Een wind als deze is gevuld met stemmen.
’t Is het gehuil van voorouders. Ze ratelen
hun verhalen, al hun stemmen gebundeld
in een grote stem. Maar één stem is anders.
Eén stem is aan het fluisteren. Wijkt af. Is
aan het spioneren vanuit het duister. Beslist.
Mono
‘Dit strand was vroeger van kannibalen.
De sterken schrokten de zwakken op.
Maar de tanden spuugden ze uit.
Zoals u of ik een kersenpit zou uitspuwen.’
Dia
‘Uw versie van de waarheid is het enige wat telt.’
‘De waarheid is enkelvoud.
Versies daarvan zijn onwaarheden.’
Epi
Laat je hart gidsen. Gebeden snakken naar
je ziel. Spijker dat vast in je herinnering.
Je kunt kiezen: je kunt blijven of meegaan.
Kennis is een spiegel. Hij bespringt en
vervloekt je dromen. Je moet doen wat het
ook is dat je niet mag nalaten te doen. Als
je valt zal ik je vangen maar de doden blijven
nooit dood. Ze houden nimmer op met ratelen.
(Bij de ondertitels van de film Cloud Atlas van Tom Tykwer)
Bert Bevers
logen
(Bij de ondertitels van de film Cloud Atlas van Tom Tykwer)
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver. Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
•fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bevers, Bert
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
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Crane, Hart, FDM in New York
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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The Day of Wrath;
Dies Iræ
Day of Satan’s painful duty!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty;
So says Virtue, so says Beauty.
Ah! what terror shall be shaping
When the Judge the truth’s undraping—
Cats from every bag escaping!
Now the trumpet’s invocation
Calls the dead to condemnation;
All receive an invitation.
Death and Nature now are quaking,
And the late lamented, waking,
In their breezy shrouds are shaking.
Lo! the Ledger’s leaves are stirring,
And the Clerk, to them referring,
Makes it awkward for the erring.
When the Judge appears in session,
We shall all attend confession,
Loudly preaching non-suppression.
How shall I then make romances
Mitigating circumstances?
Even the just must take their chances.
King whose majesty amazes,
Save thou him who sings thy praises;
Fountain, quench my private blazes.
Pray remember, sacred Saviour,
Mine the playful hand that gave your
Death-blow. Pardon such behavior.
Seeking me, fatigue assailed thee,
Calvary’s outlook naught availed thee;
Now ’twere cruel if I failed thee.
Righteous judge and learnèd brother,
Pray thy prejudices smother
Ere we meet to try each other.
Sighs of guilt my conscience gushes,
And my face vermilion flushes;
Spare me for my pretty blushes.
Thief and harlot, when repenting,
Thou forgavest—complimenting
Me with sign of like relenting.
If too bold is my petition
I’ll receive with due submission
My dismissal—from perdition.
When thy sheep thou hast selected
From the goats, may I, respected,
Stand amongst them undetected.
When offenders are indited,
And with trial-flames ignited,
Elsewhere I’ll attend if cited.
Ashen-hearted, prone and prayerful,
When of death I see the air full,
Lest I perish too be careful.
On that day of lamentation,
When, to enjoy the conflagration,
Men come forth, O be not cruel:
Spare me, Lord—make them thy fuel.
Ambrose Bierce
(1842—1914)
The Day of Wrath
Dies Iræ
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More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bierce, Ambrose, Bierce, Ambrose
Vachel Lindsay
(1879 – 1931)
On the Road to Nowhere
What wild oats did you sow
When you left your father’s house
With your cheeks aglow?
Eyes so strained and eager
To see what you might see?
Were you thief or were you fool
Or most nobly free?
Were the tramp-days knightly,
True sowing of wild seed?
Did you dare to make the songs
Vanquished workmen need?
Did you waste much money
To deck a leper’s feast?
Love the truth, defy the crowd
Scandalize the priest?
On the road to nowhere
What wild oats did you sow?
Stupids find the nowhere-road
Dusty, grim and slow.
Ere their sowing’s ended
They turn them on their track,
Look at the caitiff craven wights
Repentant, hurrying back!
Grown ashamed of nowhere,
Of rags endured for years,
Lust for velvet in their hearts,
Pierced with Mammon’s spears,
All but a few fanatics
Give up their darling goal,
Seek to be as others are,
Stultify the soul.
Reapings now confront them,
Glut them, or destroy,
Curious seeds, grain or weeds
Sown with awful joy.
Hurried is their harvest,
They make soft peace with men.
Pilgrims pass. They care not,
Will not tramp again.
O nowhere, golden nowhere!
Sages and fools go on
To your chaotic ocean,
To your tremendous dawn.
Far in your fair dream-haven,
Is nothing or is all…
They press on, singing, sowing
Wild deeds without recall!
Vachel Lindsay poetry
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More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, Lindsay, Vachel
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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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Crapsey, Adelaide
Whoso list to hunt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Thomas Wyatt
(1503 – 1542)
Whoso list to hunt,
I know where is an hind
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More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive W-X, Archive W-X, History of Britain
“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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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Stephen Crane
Nacht=Klage
über den überverhofften betroffenen Abscheid ihrer lieben Freunde
Das große Liecht der Welt entzeücht sich nun der Erden
und eylet fort ins Meer / mit seinen müden Pferden;
man hängt die Fenster zu / weil Morpheus komt heran
eß sehnt sich nach dem Schlaff / was Odem blasen kan;
Man sieht der Sternen Heer mit ihrem Golde prangen;
Auch Luna zeiget uns das Silber ihrer Wangen
die Schaffe gehn zu Stall / der Schäffer geht zur Ruh;
eß regt sich niemand mehr / die Blumen tuhn sich zu;
Die Welt ist schon zu Bett / umringt mit vielen Träumen
Ich aber nur allein / ich geh hier bey den Bäumen
da weit und breit herum / der Tau / das Kind der Nacht
sampt meiner Zehren=qvell die Gräser feüchter macht.
Hier lass ich mein Gedicht / mein Traurgedicht erklingen
und hebe niedrig an / auff Deutsch also zu singen.
Mars / O Mars / bistu der Mann
denn das ganze diser Erden
Jezt muß pflicht= und dienstbar werden
der uns Seuffzen lehren kan?
Ich gedacht / Ich wolt alhier
bey den liebsten Freunden bleiben
und mit ihn′n die Zeit vertreiben
wer gedachte da an dihr?
In dem triffstu unsre Stadt
daß der werten Freunde hauffen
mehrstes teils davon gelauffen
O der zweymahl grimmen Taht!
Ich weiß nicht / wie mir geschehn
Ey / wo sind doch meine Lieben?
Wo ist der und der geblieben?
Läst sich hier denn niemand sehn?
Auff den Gassen ist Geschrey:
Cloris sizt schon auff dem Wagen
Galathee lest mir sagen
daß sie schon von hinnen sey.
Hie läufft der / und hohlt den Paß
Jener geht das Schiff zu frachten
Seumsahl wil man ganz verachten
hie hilfft keiner Augen naß.
Ich bin nicht mehr / die ich bin
wündsch Euch andern Glük zum Reisen
wolt euch selbst den Weg zwar weisen
doch man lest mich nicht dahin.
O diß hat der Krieg gemacht!
Phebus steiget auff und nieder
Galathe kombt schwerlich wieder
gibt sie einmahl guhte Nacht.
Gerne schryb ich weiter fort
doch die Faust wil mir erkalten
und kan kaum die Feder halten
guhte Nacht du liebster Ort.
Sibylla Schwarz
(1621-1638)
Nacht=Klage
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More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Archive S-T, SIbylla Schwarz
De Profundis
Es ist ein Stoppelfeld, in das ein schwarzer Regen fällt.
Es ist ein brauner Baum, der einsam dasteht.
Es ist ein Zischelwind, der leere Hütten umkreist —
Wie traurig dieser Abend.
Am Weiler vorbei
Sammelt die sanfte Waise noch spärliche Ähren ein.
Ihre Augen weiden rund und goldig in der Dämmerung
Und ihr Schoß harrt des himmlischen Bräutigams.
Bei der Heimkehr
Fanden die Hirten den süßen Leib
Verwest im Dornenbusch.
Ein Schatten bin ich ferne finsteren Dörfern.
Gottes Schweigen
Trank ich aus dem Brunnen des Hains.
Auf meine Stirne tritt kaltes Metall.
Spinnen suchen mein Herz.
Es ist ein Licht, das in meinem Mund erlöscht.
Nachts fand ich mich auf einer Heide,
Starrend von Unrat und Staub der Sterne.
Im Haselgebüsch
Klangen wieder kristallne Engel.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
De Profundis
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More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Trakl, Georg, Trakl, Georg
2 Rue Haute Pierre
sonnet
Verlaine, je wappert gereïncarneerd als witte vlag
met een zwartwit-afbeelding van je bokkige kop
aan de gevel van het hoekhuis op de heuveltop
waar je ter wereld kwam op een milde zaterdag.
Soms vouwt de speelse bries je mond tot een lach,
soms lijk je sprekend op een hoofd in een strop.
Onder dit raam lag je, kapiteinszoon in hansop,
die de zomerhemel boven Metz ontwaken zag.
Je kon toen niet weten wat je wachtte in Parijs:
je eigen huilende baby in de slapeloze nacht,
de ontembare droom van gifgroen absintkruid
en de Ardennese jongen die je naar het paradijs
lokte met ogen als parels vol grijsblauwe pracht,
de Helse Bruidegom die jou koos als zijn bruid.
Thomas van der Zwan
2 Rue Haute Pierre
sonnet
Biografie: Thomas van der Zwan (1986) is een Vlaams-Nederlandse publicist die schreef voor o.a. Hollands Maandblad, Liter, De Optimist en Vuurland. Hij woont in Leuven en werkt als leerkracht Nederlands op een middelbare school. Websites: https://www.thomasvanderzwan.com/ en https://thomasvanderzwan.substack.com/
(photo: thomas van der zwan)
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More in: Archive U-V, Archive Y-Z, Archive Y-Z, Verlaine, Paul, Zwan, Thomas van der
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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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Crapsey, Adelaide
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