The Low Countries. Jaargang 5

[p. 218]

Five Poems by Herman de Coninck

Taarlo

We walk, the two of us, through the autumn day.
And in spring too I feel no different.
We walk through much brown tavern-brown of leaves
through much dark-red loss, appellation controlée,

that deepens in the cellar of the years.
We walk through the beiger-turning woods of Drente.
Hear the wind passing through the hennaed trees
sounding like an oboe, tramp among instruments.

33, and in the midst of the dark wood
of life. And with a sense of nowhere belonging,
at home in the woods and desolate at home.

Will we one day, maybe, ever?
The summer is past, the hay-making is over.
The here is nowhere, and the now is never.

From Sounding like an Oboe (Met een klank van hobo, 1980)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Envoi

If only she could see it, would see it. -
What is it that's still missing, God wondered, that sixth day.
Everything was too hard, Adam too, he'd had to do it
too fast. There should be less keen memory in it. And some smile.

Or was that the same thing? And what do you make it of?
Not of frivolity, but of knowing everything
and thinking it very bad, and not being put off.
And God invented compassion.

And after that two arms to put it in,
all kinds of things, coming, crying, being silly, superfluous.
Then He rested and thought: now what else do I need?

And then He made two eyes. -
So that she would see him as he died.
So that at last he'd be permitted to.

Memory's Acres (De hectaren van het geheugen, 1985)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Lithe Love (9)

your sweaters & your white & red
scarves & your stockings & your panties
(made with love, said the commercial)
& your bras (there's poetry in
such things, especially when you wear them) -
they're scattered around in this poem
the way they are in your room.

come on in, reader, make yourself
comfortable, don't trip over the
syntax & kicked-off shoes,
have a seat.

(meanwhile we kiss each other in this
sentence in brackets, that way
the reader won't see us.) what do you think of it,
this is a window to look at
reality, all that you see out there
exists, isn't it exactly
the way it is in a poem?

From Lithe Love (De lenige liefde, 1969)
Translated by James S Holmes (in ‘Dremples’, 7/8, Amsterdam, 1979).

[p. 219]

Birthday Verse

You never said anything. I always had to ask.
If you loved me. & you gave me a kiss.
If it was safe that first time,
& another kiss.
& a little later if I was doing it right
& a kiss, O.

You never said anything, always said it with your eyes.
Your eyes that stayed behind in your face
alone when I left you;
your eyes after crying:
you weren't there,
you looked at me like faraway places,
& I had to go there,

& once I had got that far,
the eyes that you used to say ‘darling’,
looking to see if it didn't change
on its way to me.

& when you lay by the road in the meadow,
O what all hadn't you broken,
your legs, your ribs, your eyes, me.
You never said anything, always said it with your eyes,
the way you lay there dying,
eyeing,

& your eyes that your son has in now,
that he uses to say: don't go -
you never said anything, he says it, & you look at me.

From As Long as the Snow Lies (Zolang er sneeuw ligt, 1975)
Translated by James S Holmes (in ‘Poetry International’, Rotterdam, 1983).

Yonder

I'm looking for a village.
And in it a house. And in that a
room, with a bed in, with a woman in.
And in that woman lips.

Outside the river broadens
to go farther, the silver-scaled,
fish-holding, boat-bearing,
sea-seeking, here-staying.

So a comparison looks for
a poem for the night,
a man a woman,
a bookmark a fold.
Night claps the book shut.

From Singular (Enkelvoud, 1991)
Translated by Tanis Guest.