Alan Hollinghurst, Maxwell BodenheimDe Britse dichter en schrijver Alan Hollinghurst werd geboren op 26 mei 1954 in Stoud, Gloucestershire. Zie ook alle tags voor Alan Hollinghurst op dit blog.
Confidential Chats with Boys
1.
There are things in trousers called men,
almost too well-mannered, passing
as gentlemen – human skunks
hatched from rattlesnakes’ eggs.
You meet them in fashionable hotels
where families stay, playing croquet
and the gallant, sought after for charades;
their impersonations are famous.
Avoid these men who avoid
real men and manly sports,
who prefer to go bathing with boys
and plan a pretty five-mile walk.
Their germs are everywhere, in schools,
on hotel towels and drinking cups,
left on linen and the tasting-spoon;
their breath is the fog of blindness.
Keep your eye on that jug,
that candlestick, and when he moves,
hit him to leave him scarred:
scar the skunk and coward for life.
5.
With mother ill at Christmas
there was no Swiss crib
or consolation for her
withdrawn presence.
Not to make a noise
I lay in state on the floor,
a black speaker at each ear,
to hear my Russian music:
with lilies on the suicide’s grave,
with Lorelei and the cold river,
with the girl’s toy drum burying
her soldier, brother, lover,
each day I reduced
the box of liqueur chocolates,
crushing the little barrels
between my molars, coughing
and warming at the stuff on my tongue:
sweet, unpleasant, but addictive,
an overdrawn bachelor’s gift
not likely to be missed.
Mud
November was always mud.
Crossing a ploughed field
our feet grew footballs of clay;
matted with leaves its crust
dropped on bootroom floors.
Its odour was sharp and cold
as a rocket’s nitre, cold as
gardeners’ hands daubing the hot tap.
Grandfather’s eastward view
was mud, deepening and retentive.
His fingers were never free of it,
holding letters broken at their creases
with folding, pressing into a shelled church
for shelter, opening smoke-darkened wings
of a Flemish triptych.
At Cairo it flooded the lift
and he ordered duckboards
to be laid across the Mess,
and left at dusk to walk
barefoot on the red carpets of a mosque.
In peacetime at his dig
the sprigged Orpheus and running hare
shone dully for one day
before the villa’s hidden spring
sapped the bank of earth
and closed their eyes with mud.
Mud is piled on the tarpaulin
at the grave’s edge, curls up
round our polished black welts,
and sends its chill rising
through the soles of the feet like worms.
Alan Hollinghurst (Stoud, 26 mei 1954)
De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Maxwell Bodenheim werd geboren op 26 mei 1892 in Hermanville, Mississippi. Zie ook alle tags voor Maxwell Bodenheim op dit blog.
Fabrieksmeisje
Waarom zijn je ogen als droge bruine bloempeulen,
Nog steeds, gegrepen door de herinnering aan verloren bloemblaadjes?
Ik voel dat ze, als ik ze aanraak,
Zouden verbrokkelen tot vallend bruin stof,
En jij zou daar staan met een zichtbare blindheid.
Toch zou je niet terugdeinzen, want je leven
Is al lang geleden uit je hoofd geleerd,
En ogen zouden alleen maar wegsmelten tegen de hoge wanden.
Bovendien, bij het maken van dozen,
Bestrooid met ruwe vergeet-mij-nietjes,
Ben je merkwaardig gezegend als je ogen dood zijn.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Maxwell Bodenheim (26 mei 1892 – 6 februari 1954)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e mei ook mijn blog van 26 mei 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 mei 2019 en ook mijn blog van 26 mei 2018.
