Dolce far niente
I See The Boys Of Summer
I
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
Theire in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.
I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb’s weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.
I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its hearts;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.
Swansea, de geboorteplaats van Dylan Thomas
De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Lucille Clifton werd geboren in New York op 27 juni 1936. Zie ook alle tags voor Lucille Clifton op dit blog.
The Photograph: A Lynching
is it the cut glass
of their eyes
looking up toward
the new gnarled branch
of the black man
hanging from a tree?
is it the white milk pleated
collar of the woman
smiling toward the camera,
her fingers loose around
a christian cross drooping
against her breast?
is it all of us
captured by history into an
accurate album? will we be
required to view it together
under a gathering sky?
if i should
enter the house and speak
with my own voice, at last,
about its awful furnitutre,
pulling apart the covering
over the dusty bodies; the randy
father, the husband holding ice
in his hand like a blessing,
the mother bleeding into herself
and the small imploding girl,
i say if i should walk into
that web, who will come flying
after me, leaping tall buildings?
you?
Further note to Clark
do you now how hard it is for me?
do you know what you’re asking?
what i can promise to be is water,
water plain and direct as Niagara.
unsparing of myself, unsparing of
the cliff i batter, but also unsparing
of you, tourist. the question for me is
how long can i cling to this edge?
the question for you is
what have you ever traveled toward
more than your own safety?
mijn droom over de wederkomst
mary is een oude vrouw zonder schoenen.
ze gelooft het niet.
niet wanneer haar buik begint te borrelen
en de afdruk van een vinger achterlaat op een plek
die geen man aanraakt.
niet wanneer de sneeuw in haar haar wegsmelt.
niet wanneer de vreemdeling op wie ze altijd wachtte
verschijnt, gekleed in lichtjes, aan haar
keukentafel.
ze is een oude vrouw en
gelooft het niet.
wanneer er op een nacht iets op haar tenen valt,
noemt ze het een vos,
maar ze geeft het te eten.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e juni ook mijn blog van 27 juni 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 27 juni 2019 en ook mijn blog van 27 juni 2016 en eveneens mijn blog van 27 juni 2015 deel 2.