De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Elizabeth Alexander werd geboren op 30 mei 1962 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Elizabeth Alexander op dit blog.

 

 

Autumn Passage

 

On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

 

On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.

 

On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”

 

“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,

 

September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,

 

glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates

 

even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns

 

florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.

 

 

 

 

Islands Number Four

 

1.

 

Agnes Martin, Islands Number Four,

Repeated ovals on a grid, what appears

To be perfect is handmade, disturbed.

Tobacco brown saturates canvas to burlap,

Clean form from a distance, up close, her hand.

All wrack and bramble to oval and grid.

Hollows in the body, containers for grief.

What looks to be perfect is not perfect.

 

Odd oval portholes that flood with light.

 

2.

 

Description of a Slave Ship, 1789:

Same imperfect ovals, calligraphic hand.

At a distance, pattern. Up close, bodies

Doubled and doubled, serried and stacked

In the manner of galleries in a church,

In full ships on their sides or on each other.

Isle of woe, two-by-two, spoon-fashion,

Not unfrequently found dead in the morning.

Slave ships, the not pure, imperfect ovals,

Portholes through which they would never see home,

The flesh rubbed off their shoulders, elbows, hips.

Barracoon, sarcophagus, indestructible grief

Nesting in the hollows of the abdomen.

The slave ship empty, its cargo landed

And sold for twelve ounces of gold apiece

 

Or gone overboard. Islands. Aftermath.

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Alexander (New York, 30 mei 1962)

 

 

 

 

De Afro-Amerikaanse dichter Countee Cullen werd geboren als Countee LeRoy Porter op 30 mei 1903 in Louisville, Kentucy, of Baltimore. Zie ook alle tags voor Countee Cullen op dit blog.

 

 

From the Dark Tower

 

We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made to eternally weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

 

 

 

 

Saturday's Child

 

Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday--
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow

 

 

 

 

Countee Cullen (30 mei 1903 – 9 januari 1946)

 

 

 

De Vlaamse dichter en schrijver Emmanuel Hiel werd geboren in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde op 30 mei 1834. Zie ook alle tags voor Emmanuel Hiel op dit blog.

 

 

Een werkman

 

Door hageljacht en wind,

In de overgroote stad,

Een lieflik bedelkind,

Zong, 't oog van tranen nat...

Haar lied voor 't beetje brood,

Drong dwars door been en merg:

Wie helpt haar uit den nood?

Het is te zwak voor 't werk!

 

Een rijke loopt voorbij,

Misschien vol medelij?

Een volksstroom rolt voorbij,

Gevoelloos als de tij!

Geen herte wordt geraakt,

De wind waait door heur rok,

En zijn heur voeten naakt,

Ze warmt ze in 't sneeuwgevlok.

 

Een schaamle werkman kwam,

Hij keek naar 't kindje heen,

Toen hij heur handje nam,

Sprak hij: ‘Staak uw gesteen...

Uw ouders! snikt ge, dood!

Kom, kind, de storm woelt ruw...

Kom, is mijn last, ach, groot!

Mijn kindren wachten u.’.

 

 

 

 

Emmanuel Hiel (30 mei 1834 - 27 augustus 1899)

Borstbeeld in Schaarbeek

 

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata:

 

De Vlaamse dichter Jan Geerts werd geboren in Hoogstraten in 1972. Zie ook alle tags voor Jan Geerts op dit blog.

 

Zwaartekracht

 

We liggen op onze rug, in onze open armen
verwelkomt zich een afscheid. Je praat maar
anders dan ervoor. Alsof het niet zo bedoeld was.
Alsof de lichamen waarin we liggen het vermogen
om ons te bestaan kwijt zijn. Het kan beginnen, het
vallen in de diepzee boven ons, het verdrinken in de lucht.

 

We wilden wat de vogels deden, maar
we waren het land waarover de wind
met de vogels daarin. En zonder de vogels
waren we nooit het land geweest.

 

 

Jan Geerts (Hoogstraten, 1972)

 

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 30^e mei ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

De Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijver André Brink werd geboren op 29 mei 1935 in Vrede. Zie ook alle tags voor André Brink op dit blog.

 

Uit: Surprise Visit

 

“He never really learnt to cope with that. The only constant in those years was Mum. His father was always more of an absence than a presence. But Mum, yes, she made the difference. Which was why he finally had to make the effort to come all this way to see her. For the last time? Before he went to the States he had already paid her a number of visits, of which each could have been the last. But she held on. Not without some perversity, he sometimes thought. Always a contrary old bird.

He walks down the passage, his rubber soles squeaking on the green linoleum. Down to the end, Jolene has said, then sharp left. Into a small, undefined kind of space which may once have been a storeroom, when the old red-brick building was still a girls’ school. He had actually come here two or three times during his university years, when the girls put on the plays indefatigably penned and produced by the Welshman who taught English and with whom he’d struck up some kind of easy-going friendship. It was mainly cricket that had brought the two of them together. But for some time, at least a year or so, the prof’s daughter had provided an additional attraction. She was still at this school then and acted in a couple of her father’s plays. A fiery little thing, provocatively pretty. And the plays, invariably crackling with Gaelic magic, heightened her attraction. What was the last one? Of course: The Isles of the Blest, when after the show he and she slipped along some corridor into a secluded lobby at the end, which might have been this very space, and briefly wrought their own magic until they were interrupted, at the critical moment, by the avenging fury of a principal.

Three doors lead from here. The middle one must be the one he is looking for, if Jolene is to be believed. Opening into what resembles the waiting room of a railway station. Even smelling like one. Except that this one, large and lugubrious, has darker undertones. What must undoubtedly be the smell of death. When one ends up here there are no further shifts or moves to be expected. It is the ultimate Waiting Room. From here there are only the few steps to the hearse at the door. Abandon all hope, ye who enter. Or something to that effect.”

 

 

 

André Brink (Vrede, 29 mei 1935)

 

 

 

 

De Catalaanse dichter, schrijver en vertaler Eduard Escoffet werd geboren op 29 mei 1979 in Barcelona. Zie ook alle tags voor Eduard Escoffet op dit blog.

 

 

alles wurscht

 

die liebe
verdirbt alles;
verdirbt den sex,
zerstört den verstand
und bleicht die farbe der haut aus.
sie macht aus den augen ein möbel
und aus dem bett ein weiteres möbel
– jetzt ein mal nach dem anderen –.
die liebe tötet das flirten,
tötet die masern ab
und tötet den zerstreuten blick
und richtet die moral wieder
auf unbekannte neigungen aus.

die liebe
verdirbt alles;
macht die stimme heiser,
vereitelt die pläne und die panorama-aussichten
und macht den kaffee mit klumpen voll
und mit durchgegangenen nerven die adern.
die liebe besänftigt die see und die zahmsten landschaften,
lässt die plattfüße platt
und plättet die wildeste rute.

die liebe
verdirbt alles:
sie bedeckt dir die augen,
und zwischen gardinen und rollläden
vergesse ich mich selbst,
die flüsse sind weiterhin die flüsse
und ich weiß nicht mehr, was tun.

 

mmv

 

 

Eduard Escoffet (Barcelona, 29 mei 1979)

 

 

 

De Engelse letterkundige, schrijver en journalist Gilbert Keith Chesterton werd geboren in Londen op 29 mei 1874. Zie ook alle tags voor G. K. Chesterton op dit blog.

 

 

The Englishman

 

St George he was for England,
And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
Out of an English flagon.
For though he fast right readily
In hair-shirt or in mail,
It isn't safe to give him cakes
Unless you give him ale.

St George he was for England,
And right gallantly set free
The lady left for dragon's meat
And tied up to a tree;
But since he stood for England
And knew what England means,
Unless you give him bacon
You mustn't give him beans.

St George he is for England,
And shall wear the shield he wore
When we go out in armour
With battle-cross before.
But though he is jolly company
And very pleased to dine,
It isn't safe to give him nuts
Unless you give him wine.

 

 

 

The Convert

 

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

 

 

 

 

G. K. Chesterton (29 mei 1874 - 14 juli 1936)

Portret door Bryan Bustard

 

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 29e mei ook mijn blog van 29 mei 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Martin Jankowski werd op 29 mei 1965 in Greifswald geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin Jankowski op dit blog.

 

 

anflug auf yogya

 

rechts das meer und links die grünen hügel
wir lachen und legen uns elegant in die kurve
eine kette rauchender vulkane taucht auf
eine armlänge vom flugzeugfenster entfernt
steck ich die hand in den dampf und lege
eine handvoll funkelnder rubine in deinen schoß

zwischen vulkankegeln wimmelt häuserschaum
wir zielen in seine schattige mitte

alles scheint fruchtbarer hier
der boden das lächeln die luft
und wenn ein erdbeben käme
oder die vulkane alle zugleich
in wildem übermut das flimmern
der stadt und das land auslöschten
hätten wir mühsam wie alle gelebt
doch näher am glück

sieh nur der mond
wird zornig rot spielt
schattenspiele mit den wolken

 

 

 

 

Martin Jankowski (Greifswald, 29 mei 1965)