Foto: R. Amesz

dinsdag 24 september 2013

NIEUW: AZUL KIDS, kinderboeken

Gaat allen naar de website van de nieuwe kinderboekenuitgeverij AZUL KIDS! VOOR DE VOLLEDIGE WEERGAVE VAN DE WEBSITE EN HET EERSTE PRACHTBOEK VAN DEZE NIEUWE UITGEVERIJ KLIK OP: AZUL KIDS"

vrijdag 6 september 2013

THE PRAGUE REVUE: ACROSS THE FIELDS


Across the Fields and Other Poems

Poetry
By Hans van de Waarsenburg

THE PRAGUE REVUE

02.09.2013












Hans van de Waarsenburg is an award-winning poet from the Netherlands. Here, in Peter Boreas' translation from the Dutch, are poems from 'The Past is Never Dead'(Eyewear Publishing, London, 2013) reprinted with the poet's permission. The following selection is comprised of a kind of archipelago of island lyrics on the experience of the poet's trip to Ireland. The first of which is 'Across the Fields', a poignant and elegiac meditation dedicated to the late Seamus Heaney. Enjoy.
Poetry
By Hans van de Waarsenburg


ACROSS THE FIELDS
         For Seamus Heaney

    Across the fields, well past the midst
    Of life, the shadows of the paths.
    The changing of the harsh afternoon light.
    A feather in his throat and watching

    Things tumbling slowly. Across the fields
    The word strides, so slowly that sound
    Loses itself, dissolves in the mist over the
    Stubble fields. And the walker? He

    Peers across the fields at the fading
    Horizon. Tries to step out of his
    Shadow, while dusk falls around
    His head. The dead rustle among

    The autumn leaves or rest on the branches
    Of the past. If  there should be a farewell,
    Let it wait and bring a little ‘wood
    To the forest and peat to the moors’.



    GALWAY


We smelled the smoke in the pubs, gazed
At the peat fires, as if everything would
Last and nothing had changed. Words
Unspoken, suppressed, left in the dunes,

On beaches. Perhaps, you said,
There are journeys one goes alone, if we
Lived without time or need. But wherever
The roads went, ships arrived and I

Looked for your face in every port.
Horizons are but a perspective, ever in
A different light. You voice is parched, you said.
Come here and put your lips to glass or verse.




ARAN ISLANDS


The ferry to the islands cleft the waves.
The holy water swept in from the Atlantic
Across the edges of the bay. A gale
Intertwined our hair and grains of salt

Filled the lines of years. A hand
Covered a hand. Stacks of peat rose
In our heads. Like a pig being
Stuck or crumbling black pudding on

Our plates, steaming amidst apples and
Autumn. But isn’t it spring, you said and
Hummed an old tune in my ear. We stared
At the proud waters of the luminescent sea.



Sailor’s legs felt for the quay. A
Lame duck waddled from the ship. A near-
Dead man was lying on the quay. Drunk, dropped
Out of his frame, tongue still grey with whiskey,

Erosion of Jameson on the lips. Today this is
Our island, you said and pulled me away from
Him. Salt rain corroded the houses. There
Were no trees to carve one’s name in.

Grey the skies, grey the water. No hangover
Lurking here. We gazed across the forgotten
Islands, where stone rules over the dead
Unintelligibly, and the day contracted.


Shivering we covered ourselves in blankets.
The horse’s hoofs clacked steadily,
As if the roads were soft paths, every
Step reversible. Seals were swimming

Towards the horizon. Potatoes lay like
Eggs in the scanty peat. On your lips
I tasted the salt that encrusts stone,
And then you looked at me, looked back

Through my eyes. This is the end of a world,
You said, where old can never age. Where
Time is silence in an urn filled with ashes. Aran,
Dream with the smell of horse blankets.



Hans van de Waarsenburg (Helmond 1943) published his first collection of poems, entitled Gedichten (Poems), in 1965. His collection De vergrijzing (The graying) was awarded the prestigious Jan Campert Prize for Poetry in 1973. In March 2004 he received the first Municipal Award of the Helmond Town Council for his entire work.Between 1997 and 2000 he was chairman of the PEN Centre of the Netherlands. He was the founder of The Maastricht International Poetry Nights – a big biannual international poetry manifestation- and President of it from 1997 - 2013.
The above work is from a collection entitled The Past Is Never Dead and was reprinted with permission from Eyewear Publishing.




  




maandag 2 september 2013

SEAMUS HEANEY 1939 - 2013




















Oaxaca, Mexico, 1999                                                  Foto: Alberto Darszon