De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Robert Bly werd geboren op 23 december 1926 in Madison, Minnesota. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Bly op dit blog.

 

THE LIFE OF WEEDS

The cry of those being eaten by America,
Others pale and soft being stored for later eating

And Jefferson
Who saw hope in new oats

The wild houses go on
With long hair growing from between their tots
The feet at night get up
And run down the long white roads by themselves

Dams reverse themselves and want to go stand alone in the desert

Ministers who dive headfirst into the earth
The pale flesh
Spreading guiltily into new literatures

This is why these poems are so sad
The long dead running over the fields

The mass sinking down
The light in children’s faces fading at six or seven
The world will soon break up into small colonies of the saved

 

ISEULT AND THE BADGER

The ink we use to write seeps in through our fingers.
What we call reason is the way the parasite
Learns to live in the saint’s intestinal tract.

Even the finest reason still contains the darkness
From feathers packed together; General Patton
Was a salmon who grew large in the Etruscan pool.

Poetry, being language, is woven from animal hair.
The badgers and the thrushes soak up the stain of separation,
Just as lanolin makes the shearer’s hands soft.

The old thinkers of quiddity remind us
Of the fear the hogs feel hanging by their hind legs;
For we know our throats are open to the unfaithful.

Iseult said, “I was climbing on the sounds of my lover’s
Name toward God! Then a badger ran past.
When I said, ‘Oh badger,’ I fell to earth.”

Perhaps if we used no words at all in poems
We could continue to climb, but things seep in.
We are porous to the piled leaves on the ground.

 

The Fat Old Couple Whirling Around

The drum says that the night we die will be a long night.
It says the children have time to play. Tell the grownups
They can pull the curtains around the bed tonight.

The old man wants to know how the war ended.
The young girl wants her breasts to cause the sun to rise.
The thinker wants to keep misunderstanding alive.

It’s all right if the earthly monk is buried near the altar.
It’s all right if the singer fails to turn up for her concert.
It’s good if the fat old couple keeps whirling around.

Let the parents sing over the cradle every night.
Let the pelicans go on living in their stickly nests.
Let the duck go on loving the mud around her feet.

It’s all right if the ant always remembers his way home.
It’s all right if Bach keeps reaching for the same note.
It’s all right if we knock the ladder away from the house.

Even if you are a puritan it would be all right
If you join the lovers in their ruined house tonight.
It’s good if you become a soul and then disappear.

 

Verbaasd over een opeenhoping van sneeuw

Ik had alleen in mijn verduisterde huis lopen zingen
over een man die erin toestemt te lijden.
De deur ging open, ik was verbaasd dat de lucht dik was;
het paard had zijn romp naar het noorden gekeerd.
Sneeuw glijdt langs de valleien van zijn rug.
Het witte dak stond kalm tussen de zwarte bomen.

Het is schokkend dat de sneeuw op de hele boerderij viel
terwijl de zanger alleen en op zichzelf in zijn woning bleef.
Net alsof de Afrikaanse reiger, gesneden uit een buffelhoorn,
plotseling zijn bek open zou doen en zou roepen,
of een klok onder glas die op zou stijgen en slaan.
De hoef van het paard schraapt een zeeschelp tevoorschijn
en de boer vindt een Indiaanse steen met een gat dwars er doorheen.

 

Vertaald door J. Bernlef

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 23^e december ook mijn blog van 23 december 2018 deel 1 en ook deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.