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By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
By the bivouac’s fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow–but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,
The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac’s fitful flame.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
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A noiseless patient spider
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: A noiseless patient spider
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun–hark to the musical clank,
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink,
Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles,
Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford–while,
Scarlet and blue and snowy white,
The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: Cavalry Crossing a Ford
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Among the Multitude
Among the men and women the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
any nearer than I am,
Some are baffled, but that one is not–that one knows me.
Ah lover and perfect equal,
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: Among the Multitude
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Adieu To a Soldier
Adieu, O soldier!
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts’the long maneuver,
Red battles with their slaughter, ‘the stimulus’the strong, terrific game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts’the trains of Time through you, and like of you, all fill’d,,
With war, and war’s expression.
Adieu, dear comrade!
Your mission is fulfill’d—but I, more warlike,
Myself, and this contentious soul of mine,
Still on our own campaigning bound,
Through untried roads, with ambushes, opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis’often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out’aye here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: Adieu To a Soldier
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Beat! beat! drums!–Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows–through doors–burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet–no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums–so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums!–Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities–over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day–no brokers or speculators–Would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums–you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums!–Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley–stop for no expostulation;
Mind not the timid–mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;
Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump, O terrible drums–so loud you bugles blow.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: Beat! Beat! Drums!
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When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, Whitman, Walt
Desmond Tutu se laaste vlug
in sy laaste tyd sweef hy geluidloos oor die water
die wind hou asem op oor die stroomversnellings
geen Woord meer ontsnap uit sy snawel nie
hy is visarend aartsbiskop vader man
sy oë speur stroomop & stroomaf
na dubbele reënboë soos poorte op die horison
salf wierook mirre was woorde vir sy kinders ook vuur
nou verswart & skeur sy kleed as sy roep die stilte breek
met uitgestrekte kloue in ’n laaste seëngroet duik hy verloor
sy kruis & vang hy ’n 
vir sy vlug onder deur ’n reënboog
Carina van der Walt
Desmond Tutu se laaste vlug*
Farewell poem
* In Greek and Roman times, the Eagle was referred to as a God or “The King of Birds”. In many cultures the Eagle is known as a symbol of power and resurrection,
Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. In 1984 Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tutu died from cancer at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town on 26 December 2021, at the age of 90. The funeral took place on 1 January 2022 at St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town.
Carina van der Walt moved from Klerksdorp in South Africa to the Netherlands in 2007. In Klerksdorp she was a high school teacher during apartheid. After the death of her first husband she took up her studies in literature. She came to Tilburg University for an exchange and met her future husband. The same city (Klerksdorp recently renamed to Matlosana) was the birthplace of archbishop Desmond Tutu. He qualified as a teacher and taught there for the first years of his professional life until a law on Bantu education made it impossible for him to fulfil his work. He resigned and moved to London to get educated to become a priest. They share the same backdrop, the dry half desert part of the North West province with the beautiful acacia trees. Parenthood was an important part of both their lives.
Van der Walt met Tutu once in 2012. He came to The Hague to unveil the statue Long Walk to Freedom in celebration of Nelson Mandela. He made a massive impression on her. Carina van der Walt now lives in Tilburg in The Netherlands. She works as a writer, poet and editor.
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More in: # Archive S.A. literature, Apartheid, Archive W-X, Carina van der Walt, In Memoriam, Walt, Carina van der
In this follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Met Office Advises Caution, Rebecca Watts observes and tests the limits of humanity’s engagement with the non-human.
By turns lyrical and narrative, the poems examine familiar subjects – environmental crisis, hawks, hospitals, the sea, barbecues, flowers, Emily Dickinson – only to find their subjects staring, sometimes fighting, back.
Nature and nurture, equally red in tooth and claw, power a book-long sparring match between the overthinking poet and the ever-thoughtless universe, between the craft’s isolation and the world’s irrepressible variety.
Gloves on and gloves off, the poet’s hands destroy and build, gather and scatter, caress and strike.
Red Gloves
The women are carrying the coffin. Under the fear
of slippage they make slow steps.
We cannot say that they advance.
More than one woman is weathering – from the cool
top of her head to her strained fingers to her toes
pushed together in interview shoes – the urge,
like a rip tide, to run backwards and away.
Today is not a normal day.
( . . . )
Rebecca Watts was born in Suffolk in 1983 and currently lives in Cambridge. Her debut poetry collection, The Met Office Advises Caution, was published by Carcanet in 2016. She is also the editor of Elizabeth Jennings: New Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2019).
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
Language: English
Paperback
72 pages
ISBN-10 : 178410955X
ISBN-13 : 978-1784109554
2020
£9.89
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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, Archive W-X, Archive W-X
Poetry International heeft 11 juni tijdens het Poetry International Festival de C. Buddingh’-prijs 2021 toegekend aan de Nederlandse dichter Wout Waanders, voor zijn poëziedebuut Parkplan, een uitgave van De Harmonie. In toegankelijke verzen komt het leven van alledag aan bod: soms grappig, dan weer keihard.
Per gedicht weet je niet wat je kan verwachten: of het start absurd, en dan gaat het over iets wezenlijks zoals ziek zijn en verdwijnen, of het begint heel serieus over hoe een relatie in de slop zit en wordt uiteindelijk weer licht.
Dit jaar vond de ontknoping van de C. Buddingh’-prijs zowel in de zaal in LantarenVenster in Rotterdam als online plaats.
Ook de dichters Schiavone, René Smeets en Dorien de Wit maakten met hun debuut kans op de prijs.
De jury bestond uit Ellen Deckwitz (voorzitter), Mylo Freeman en Ilke Froyen.
De jury: “Parkplan is een zeer consistente bundel die handelt over de worsteling die het bestaan is, en hoe we daar met onze dagelijkse kleine onderhandelingen toch een kloppend geheel van proberen te maken.” Wout Waanders draait de realiteit een kwartslag, maar net genoeg om er helemaal in mee te gaan. Je stapt naar binnen en alles lijkt volkomen vanzelfsprekend:
Op een onbewaakt ogenblik
was er een meisje in mijn
rabarberlimonade gesprongen.
34e C. Buddingh’-prijs 2021
Voor de 34ste editie van de C. Buddingh’-prijs werden 25 poëziedebuten ingezonden. De jury prees het gemiddeld hoge niveau van de poëzie-eerstelingen. “Er werd intelligent geënjambeerd, de slimme intertekstualiteiten vlogen je om de ogen en aan ieder detail, van titel tot vormgeving, van pagina-opmaak tot kleurstelling, was aandacht besteed”, aldus de jury. “Er was een aantal waaruit niet alleen technisch, maar ook empathisch vernuft sprak. De bereidwilligheid om alleen te willen plezieren, maar ook om een statement in te nemen van wat poëzie vermag. Deze overtuigden door de eigen stem, doordat ze het risico durfden te nemen de lezer voor het hoofd te stoten, buiten de gebaande paden van de dichtkunst te willen gaan.”
Met de jaarlijkse uitreiking van de C. Buddingh’-prijs beoogt Poetry International sinds 1988 meer aandacht te genereren voor de meest talentvolle nieuwe stemmen in de Nederlandstalige poëzie. Voor menig dichter van naam was de C. Buddingh’-prijs de eerste belangrijke trofee die in de wacht werd gesleept. Joke van Leeuwen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer en Anna Enquist, of recenter Lieke Marsman, Ellen Deckwitz, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld en Radna Fabias en Roberta Petzoldt wonnen de prijs. In 2020 ging de prijs naar de Vlaamse dichter Jens Meijen.
• Wout Waanders wint 34e C. Buddingh’-prijs 2021
• Parkplan beste poëziedebuut van het jaar
• 25 ingezonden debuutbundels
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More in: #Modern Poetry Archive, - Book News, Archive A-B, Archive W-X, Awards & Prizes, Buddingh', Cees, Conceptual writing, Marsman, Lieke, Poetry International, Rijneveld, Marieke Lucas
On the Beach at Night
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
Walt Whitman
(1819–1892)
On the Beach at Night
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A Dream
In the night I dreamed that you had died,
And I thought you lay in your winding sheet;
And I kneeled low by your coffin side,
With my cheek on your heart that had ceased to beat.
And I thought as I looked on your form so still,
A terrible woe, and an awful pain,
Fierce as vultures that slay and kill,
Tore at my bosom and maddened my brain.
And then it seemed that the chill of death
Over me there like a mantle fell,
And I knew by my fluttering, failing breath
That the end was near, and all was well.
I woke from my dream in the black midnight –
It was only a dream at worst or best –
But I lay and thought till the dawn of light,
Had the dream been true we had both been blest.
Better to kneel by your still dead form,
With my cheek on your breast, and die that way,
Than to live and battle with night and storm,
And drift away from you day by day.
Better the anguish of death and loss,
The sharp, quick pain, and the darkness, then,
Than living on with this heavy cross
To bear about in the world of men.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1855 – 1919)
A Dream (Poem)
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More in: Archive W-X, Archive W-X, CLASSIC POETRY
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