The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

[p. 126]

Nine City Poems

Hanny Michaelis (1922-)
Leaving Amsterdam

Screeching, the tram stops at Central Station.
We get off - and a lump comes to my throat;
I still get sentimental then, thank God.
A cloud, discreet and tactful, veils the sun.

My heavy eyes flutter for one last time
like tired birds borne upon the evening wind
over the elegant stone labyrinth
of gables, church-towers and arching domes
that carve their outlines into a pale sky
full of cloud-smudges, grey and ravelling.

How long will all these things be lost to me?
But some day I'll come back, maybe.
Maybe...

As I flee hastily into the station
a drop lands wetly on my cheek: it's raining.

From Small Prelude (Klein voorspel, 1949)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Georgine Sanders (1921-)
Utrecht revisited

This canal is narrower than I thought
and deeper. Ducks are standing on the ice.
The winter was severe, a late spring ought
to be expected. Trees are drab and bare
and fallen leaves still cover yellow grass.

Yet on the dark-gray ramparts where we go,
after those many years of life abroad,
we see a field of flowers, white as snow.
Balm for the eyes, they help renew the bond
between the first spring flowers and time passing.

Were they here all the years we never came?
At home they wait for us, this year in vain.
What's Utrecht still, Janskerkhof and Dom tower,

stands small and strange. Your hand alone feels true.
I know again what I forgot too soon:
that sunless street beyond the big white house.

From An Unfinished Life (Het onvoltooid bestaan, 1990)
Translated by Georgine Sanders.

[p. 127]

Hugo Claus (1929-)
Bruges

The Venice of the North.
Moss-covered stones. Battlements.
The quayside in the rain.
In the love-water floats
a handbook on the writing
of letters to your sweetheart,
for when it's going well,
and for when it's fading out.

From Poems 1948-1993 (Gedichten 1948-1993, 1994)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Paul Citroen, Metropolis. 1923. Photos, 67.1 × 58.4 cm. Prentenkabinet, Leiden.

Richard Minne (1891-1965)
Ghent

Ghent, head and heart, indeed you're a fine city,
and that's before one says a word about
your towers, or the banners that your folk put out
to mark that they were doing well or badly.

In your time you've seen a thing or two;
only the white and black remained your pride:
it's white and black still watches over you.
But come, that's history. Put it aside.

The present day, that is the greatest wonder.
Your maidens? You won't see them wear a frown.
Your poets too deserve a measure of renown,
for all the pompous frauds among their number.

But that's all phoney, a veneer, pretence,
just like your toffs (they read their news in French).
Under those crazy winds, Ghent, there you sit;
he who'll delve for your deeper core will find it.

From Open House (In den zoeten inval, 1956)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

[p. 128]

J.A. Deelder (1944-)
Rotterdam

Mental practicality
and realism squared here meet
revelling imperturbably
in an annihilated street.

Tall and iron-hard the sky
with a sun of blazing heat
or low and blackly seething by
skeletons of steel and concrete

Beyond closed venetian blinds
apartment blocks in towering lines
seal up the horizon tight

Distant posthistoric sight -
Rotterdam hewn out of marble
cartwheeling against the light

From Renaissance. Poems '44-'94
(Renaissance. Gedichten '44-'94, 1994)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Adriaan de Roover (1923-)
Antwerp

I think again
of my city
again
of the silver umbilical cord
and the blindfolded houses
of the late Monday sun
and of the scent of the women
how they drank the dew of my voice

I stroke their pallid cheeks
the sodden red of their lips
I still have a hundred hands
of longing
a thousand fingers
of regret

From Already I Scent the Stars
(Ik ruik de sterren al, 1987)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Anton Korteweg (1944-)
Abroad in the Hague

The Hague. When I'm there I feel so far from home
I want to write myself a letter.
How am I doing there? To tell you the truth:
not very well. For me it's always been a sort
of Belgium - you want to get away again as quickly
as you can - to where it's really happening.

Between the railway lines: allotments under rain.
Always that sad wailing wafted over from the dog's home.
Traffic lights, seven, changing to red every day,
twice, the moment I come along on my bike.
Seen from my room: those dreary tram-cars,
switching rails at Central Station terminus.

Early in Spring, the crocuses choking Lange Voorhout Avenue.
In the Mauritshuis, a young girl by Vermeer.
Tall grass between the rails on the way to Scheveningen,
Ockenburgh's crematorium smoke above Kijkduin -
Now that I should see as one of my blessings:
Time then to stop writing these letters to myself.

From State of Affairs (Stand van zaken, 1991)
Translated by James Brockway.

[p. 129]

Hans van de Waarsenburg (1943-)
Maastricht

From sharp-cut corners and rectangles
the eye sweeps around

Like a crater the mouth of the old
city purses itself

On the crack between the lips the river
sucks itself on to the north

The view quivers with bone-dry corn
potato-fields arch ripe and watchful

From the highways point precisely the measures
of over-long rulers

The light, we say, shrouded in heat,
the hamlets between the hills

The banks too all along are built up
the cathedrals fallen away

Time becomes transparent, slipping backward
the craquelure flows over the fissures

Here Van Eyck sat, looking
back down the highway

Changing with the light, we say.

From No Sign of the Assailant (Van de aanvaller geen spoor, 1983)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Willem M. Roggeman (1935-)
Ode to Brussels

Brussels, the marked city,
aloof from those who love you
but for all that quick to anger,
how shall I then approach you
out of the mildewed fields?

Along the broad ribbon of asphalt
that pushes through the rolling grass

and later, over the flyover
that reaches almost to your roofs.

Concrete and glass is your heart.
You creak and hiss in two tongues.

My birthplace you are called,
but you've always been a morass,
soggy, sucking everything in.

City that defines me.
You don't even deserve
the snow on your roofs
nor the rain-showers in August.

You stick your fingers in other men's pies.
You expand, beyond rhyme and reason
fixed in another tongue.

And I who record you know
that you have no imagination,
blinking with all your lights in the night
like a whore wearing too much make-up
afflicted with the falling sickness.

From Goya's Black (Het zwart van Goya, 1982)
Translated by Tanis Guest.

Selected by Frits Niessen