kempis.nl
Nick J. Swarth
Twee november op een koude kermis
Niemand gunde hij zijn zuurverdiende geld.
Dus nadat hij het nog eens had bepoteld, had
geteld,
met peper en zout bereid en tot pap gekookt,
verteerde hij het tot de laatste spat.
Wederhelft en telg vonden de pitbull in de pot.
Hij versteende, zij weende
en snotterde: ‘Als ik ergens van baal, dan is het
dood kapitaal.’
*/
WIE NOEM JIJ DOOD?
riep de hoofdletter bot.
Dit is het boek waarin ALLES staat geschreven.
Er staat op dit boek geen enkele maat.
Er zal omstandig uit worden voorgedragen.
Die-En-Die ziet zich genoodzaakt
daarvoor een riante vergoeding te vragen.
NOEM DAT MAAR DOOD!
*/
Ik kan het je volstrekt niet uitleggen.
Ik ben zo blij dat ik nog leef.
Maar als ik eenmaal crepeer (…) wil ik (…)
in besloten kring begraven worden. Daaraan
hecht ik waarde.
En dan wil ik daar naakt liggen, ook nog.
En alle anderen moeten ook naakt zijn.
In hun handen moeten ze, stel je voor,
dorsvlegels houden,
(…)
En dan moeten ze uit mij GOOR ZWIJN
de duivel drijven. Laat niets van me heel,
lieve vrienden.
Sla me finaal tot pulp. Breek alle knoken.
Trek het vel van mijn smoel. Stomp mijn
snufferd verrot, stel moordlustige hoeren.
Trap me als een pad zo plat. Castreer me.
Voer mijn kloten aan de kat. En dan…
*/
GRAFWAARTS!
Sibe Selinay alpu
FATMA MINE
NAKAKI NAKAKI
ALLES WURSCHT
allons travailler zegt de slimmerik
en zuipt bourgogne
¿Daarnet had hij die fles
toch nog in zijn handen
voordat de zwaartekracht hem overmande
en het biertranen bruiste op het trottoir.
De Turkse uitdrager stormt naar buiten,
het gerstenat schuimt op zijn ruiten.
Hij veegt de scherven
bij elkaar IDIOOT, DOE NIET ZO RAAR
knarsend met zijn tanden.
Daarnet had hij die fles
toch nog in zijn handen.
Wir tranken uns zu
Und tranken aufs ‘Du’!
Mein Freund – der Plan!
Sibe Selinay
alpu FATMA MINE NAKAKI NAKAKI
(uit: Nick J. Swarth: MIJN ONSTERFELIJKE LEVER. Gedichten & tekeningen. Uitgeverij IJzer, Utrecht | 2012. ISBN 978 90 8684 086 1 – NUR 305 – Paperback, 64 blz. Prijs: € 10 – Zie voor meer informatie: www.swarth.nl )
Nick J. Swarth poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Swarth, Nick J.
Hans Lodeizen
(1924-1950)
Voor vader
o vader wij zijn samen geweest
in de langzame trein zonder bloemen
die de nacht als een handschoen aan-
en uittrekt wij zijn samen geweest
vader terwijl het donker ons dichtsloeg.
waar ben je nu op een klein ritje
in de vrolijke bries van een groene auto
of legde de dag haar handschoen
niet op een tafel waar schemering en
zachte genezing zeker zijn in de toekomst.
mijn lippen mijn tedere lippen dicht.
16 Juli 1950
Uit: Het innerlijk behang, Amsterdam, Van Oorschot 1950
Hans Lodeizen poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Lodeizen, Hans
J.A. Woolf: Making memories (15)
kempis.nl poetry magazine 2012
More in: J.A. Woolf
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner, but despisèd straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Sonnet 129
Verzieking der ziel in schandelijk verval,
Dat is de daad der lust; lust tot de daad
Is meineed, bloeddorst, moord, bitterste gal,
Extreem, verwilderd, ruw, wreed, vol verraad;
Amper gesmaakt, of prompt al weer veracht;
Zinloos begeerd, de buik nog amper vol,
Of zinloos weer gehaat, want aangebracht
Als lokaas, maakt het hem die toehapt dol;
Dol in de jacht, en in verovering;
Hebbend, gehad, en hebberig: zonder toom;
Zalig de daad; gedaan, een zielig ding;
Ervoor, verwacht genot; erna, een droom.
Wel weet de wereld dit, maar weet niet wel
D’ hemel te mijden leidend naar die hel.
Vertaald door Cornelis W. Schoneveld, Bestorm mijn hart, (2008, pp. 53-55); herziening feb. 2012
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: -Shakespeare Sonnets, Shakespeare
Vinko Kalinić
Ne znam odgovor
pitaš me: zašto te volim? baš tebe? meni sasvim nepoznato biće? a ne pitaš me koliko su duboke tvoje oči? i kako može živ čovjek ne osjetiti ono što u njima gori? tako svečano. i toplo.
ne znam odgovor. tek osjećam da bi se nas dvoje jako dobro razumijeli. čak i onda kada ni riječ jednu ne bi izrekli. samo da nasloniš glavu na moje grudi. netalo bi svijeta. i svega onog što grčevito skupljaju isprazni ljudi. oko čega se tuku. i za sobom vuku, ko ukleti svoje prokletstvo.
bez ičega. i sasvim goli. stajali bi nijemo. zadivljeni. u spoznanju. koliko je malo potrebno za biti sretan. i to malo, koliko je ljepše dati, no uzeti. i tako bi nestajali. ležeći jedno drugom u sjeni. šuteći. sva bi pitanja bila besmislena. i svi odgovori uzaludni. ono između nas progutalo bi sve što smo ikad bili. i što ćemo ikada biti. što je itko ikada utjelovio u riječi. dok ne bi nestali. sasvim. jedno drugom darujući, i posljednji komadić sebe.
Komiža, 18. 04. 2011
Don’t know the answer
you ask me: why I love you? yes, you? to me absolutely unknown being? but you don’t ask me how deep are those eyes of yours? and how can a living man not feel what burns inside those eyes? so festive. and warm.
I don’t know the answer. I just feel that you and I would understand each other very well. Even when we wouldn’t say one single word. just so you lean your head on my chest. the world would disappear. and all that what futile people collect frantically. things they fight for. and drag around, like damned drag their own curse.
without anything. and totally naked. we would be standing silent. amazed. in the cognition. how little is needed to be happy. and that little, how nicer is to give than to take. and that’s how we would disappear. lying in one another’s shadow. being silent. all questions would be senseless. and all answers useless. that between us would swallow everything that we’ve ever been. and what we would ever be. what has anyone ever embodied into words. until we would disappear. totally. giving each other the last particle of himself.
Translation by Darko Kotevski, Melbourne
Vinko Kalinić poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Kalinić, Vinko
Heinrich von Kleist
(1777-1811)
Für Adolfine Henriette Vogel
Mein Jettchen, mein Herzchen, mein Liebes, mein
Täubchen, mein Leben, mein liebes süßes Leben,
mein Lebenslicht, mein Alles, mein Hab und Gut,
meine Schlösser, Äcker, Wiesen und Weinberge, o
Sonne meines Lebens, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, Him-
mel und Erde, meine Vergangenheit und Zukunft,
meine Braut, mein Mädchen, meine liebe Freundin,
mein Innerstes, mein Herzblut, meine Eingeweide,
mein Augenstern, o, Liebste, wie nenn ich Dich?
Mein Goldkind, meine Perle, mein Edelstein, meine
Krone, meine Königin und Kaiserin. Du lieber Lieb-
ling, meines Herzens, mein Höchstes und Teuerstes,
mein Alles und Jedes, mein Weib, meine Hochzeit,
die Taufe meiner Kinder, mein Trauerspiel, mein
Nachruhm. Ach Du bist mein zweites besseres Ich,
meine Tugenden, meine Verdienste, meine Hoffnung,
die Vergebung meiner Sünden, meine Zukunft und
Seligkeit, o, Himmelstöchterchen, mein Gotteskind,
meine Fürsprecherin und Fürbitterin, mein Schutzen-
gel, mein Cherubim und Seraph, wie lieb ich Dich! –
[Berlin, November 1811]
Heinrich von Kleist poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Kleist, Heinrich von
De Kunduz coalitie: D66 – Groenlinks – CDA – Christenunie en VVD heeft besloten de BTW voor beeldende kunst verder te verhogen van 6 via 19 naar 21 procent per 1 october.
Beste Kunstenaar, galeriehouder en kunstliefhebber,
Zoals U wellicht heeft vernomen gaat de btw voor de podiumkunsten weer verlaagd worden naar 6%. Die van de beeldende kunst daarentegen gaat per 1 oktober omhoog naar 21%. Een volstrekt oneerlijk en onbegrijpelijk onderscheid binnen de cultuursector wordt hierdoor aangebracht.
Teken onderstaande petitie, zodat we aan deze oneerlijke en voor de beeldende kunst ondermijnende situatie een eind kunnen maken!
Schuilen in het Rijks
≡ Teken de Petitie: btwopkunstnaar6.petities.nl
Aanbieding Petitie: September 2012
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: - Art & Poetry News 2012, Melseke, Columns, THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Anton Chekhov
(Anton Tsjechov 1860-1904)
In The Graveyard
THE wind has got up, friends, and it is beginning to get dark. Hadn’t we better take ourselves off before it gets worse?”
The wind was frolicking among the yellow leaves of the old birch trees, and a shower of thick drops fell upon us from the leaves. One of our party slipped on the clayey soil, and clutched at a big grey cross to save himself from falling.
“Yegor Gryaznorukov, titular councillor and cavalier . .” he read. “I knew that gentleman. He was fond of his wife, he wore the Stanislav ribbon, and read nothing. . . . His digestion worked well . . . . life was all right, wasn’t it? One would have thought he had no reason to die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a brain), and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. . . . As though to mock him his whole tombstone is adorned with verses. . . . There is someone coming!”
A man in a shabby overcoat, with a shaven, bluish-crimson countenance, overtook us. He had a bottle under his arm and a parcel of sausage was sticking out of his pocket.
“Where is the grave of Mushkin, the actor?” he asked us in a husky voice.
We conducted him towards the grave of Mushkin, the actor, who had died two years before.
“You are a government clerk, I suppose?” we asked him.
“No, an actor. Nowadays it is difficult to distinguish actors from clerks of the Consistory. No doubt you have noticed that. . . . That’s typical, but it’s not very flattering for the government clerk.”
It was with difficulty that we found the actor’s grave. It had sunken, was overgrown with weeds, and had lost all appearance of a grave. A cheap, little cross that had begun to rot, and was covered with green moss blackened by the frost, had an air of aged dejection and looked, as it were, ailing.
“. . . forgotten friend Mushkin . . .” we read.
Time had erased the never, and corrected the falsehood of man.
“A subscription for a monument to him was got up among actors and journalists, but they drank up the money, the dear fellows . . .” sighed the actor, bowing down to the ground and touching the wet earth with his knees and his cap.
“How do you mean, drank it?”
That’s very simple. They collected the money, published a paragraph about it in the newspaper, and spent it on drink. . . . I don’t say it to blame them. . . . I hope it did them good, dear things! Good health to them, and eternal memory to him.”
“Drinking means bad health, and eternal memory nothing but sadness. God give us remembrance for a time, but eternal memory — what next!”
“You are right there. Mushkin was a well-known man, you see; there were a dozen wreaths on the coffin, and he is already forgotten. Those to whom he was dear have forgotten him, but those to whom he did harm remember him. I, for instance, shall never, never forget him, for I got nothing but harm from him. I have no love for the deceased.”
“What harm did he do you?”
“Great harm,” sighed the actor, and an expression of bitter resentment overspread his face. “To me he was a villain and a scoundrel — the Kingdom of Heaven be his! It was through looking at him and listening to him that I became an actor. By his art he lured me from the parental home, he enticed me with the excitements of an actor’s life, promised me all sorts of things — and brought tears and sorrow. . . . An actor’s lot is a bitter one! I have lost youth, sobriety, and the divine semblance. . . . I haven’t a half-penny to bless myself with, my shoes are down at heel, my breeches are frayed and patched, and my face looks as if it had been gnawed by dogs. . . . My head’s full of freethinking and nonsense. . . . He robbed me of my faith — my evil genius! It would have been something if I had had talent, but as it is, I am ruined for nothing. . . . It’s cold, honoured friends. . . . Won’t you have some? There is enough for all. . . . B-r-r-r. . . . Let us drink to the rest of his soul! Though I don’t like him and though he’s dead, he was the only one I had in the world, the only one. It’s the last time I shall visit him. . . . The doctors say I shall soon die of drink, so here I have come to say good-bye. One must forgive one’s enemies.”
We left the actor to converse with the dead Mushkin and went on. It began drizzling a fine cold rain.
At the turning into the principal avenue strewn with gravel, we met a funeral procession. Four bearers, wearing white calico sashes and muddy high boots with leaves sticking on them, carried the brown coffin. It was getting dark and they hastened, stumbling and shaking their burden. . . .
“We’ve only been walking here for a couple of hours and that is the third brought in already. . . . Shall we go home, friends?”
Anton Chekhov: In The Graveyard
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Chekhov, Anton
Hans Andreus
(1926-1977)
Laatste gedicht
Dit wordt het laatste gedicht wat ik schrijf,
nu het met mijn leven bijna is gedaan,
de scheppingsdrift me ook wat is vergaan
met letterlijk de kanker in mijn lijf,
en, Heer (ik spreek je toch maar weer zo aan,
ofschoon ik me nauwelijks daar iets bij voorstel,
maar ik praat liever tegen iemand aan
dan in de ruimte en zo is dit wel
de makkelijkste manier om wat te zeggen),-
hoe moet het nu, waar blijf ik met dat licht
van mij, van jou, wanneer het vallen, weg in
het onverhoeds onnoemelijke begint ?
Of is het dat jij me er een onverdicht
woord dat niet uitgesproken hoeft voor vindt ?
Uit: Laatste gedichten, Uitgeverij Holland, Haarlem 1977
Hans Andreus poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive A-B
Aimé Césaire
(1913-2008)
Entre autres massacres
De toutes leurs forces le soleil et la lune s’entrechoquent
les étoiles tombent comme des témoins trop mûrs
et comme une portée de souris grises
ne crains rien apprête tes grosses eaux
qui si bien emportent la berge des miroirs
ils ont mis de la boue sur mes yeux
et vois je vois terriblement je vois
de toutes les montagnes de toutes les îles
il ne reste plus rien que les quelques mauvais chicots
de l’impénitente salive de la mer
Recueil : “Cadastres”
Aimé Césaire poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Césaire, Aimé
Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (16)
Shoot! (Si Gira, 1926) The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator by Luigi Pirandello. Translated from the Italian by C. K. Scott Moncrieff.
BOOK III
5
It is no mere waste of time, you will understand, to spend half an hour in watching and considering a tiger, seeing in it a manifestation of Earth, guileless, beyond good and evil, incomparably beautiful and innocent in its savage power. Before we can come down from this “aboriginality” and reach the stage of being able to see before us a man or woman of our own time, and to recognise and consider him or her as an inhabitant of the same earth, we require–I do, at least; I cannot answer for you–a wide stretch of imagination.
And so I remained for a while looking at Signora Nestoroff before I was able to understand what she was saying to me.
But the fault, as a matter of fact, was not only mine and the tiger’s. The fact of her addressing me at all was unusual; and it is quite natural, when anyone addresses us suddenly with whom we have not been on speaking terms, that we should find it hard at first to take in the meaning, sometimes even the sound of the most ordinary words, and should ask:
“Excuse me, what was it you said?”
In a little more than eight months, since I came here, between her and myself, apart from formal greetings, barely a score of words have passed.
Then she–yes, this happened too–coming up to me, began to speak to me with great volubility, as we do when we wish to distract the attention of some one who has caught us in some action or thought which we are anxious to keep secret. (The Nestoroff speaks our language with marvellous ease and with a perfect accent, as though she had lived for many years in Italy: but she at once breaks into French whenever, if only for a moment, she changes her tone or grows excited.) She wished to find out from me whether I believed that the actor’s profession was such that any animal whatsoever (not necessarily in a metaphorical sense) could regard itself as qualified, without preliminary training, to practise it.
“Where?” I asked her.
She did not understand my question.
“Well,” I explained to her; “if you mean, practise it here, where there is no need of speech, perhaps even an animal–why not!–may be capable of succeeding.”
I saw her face cloud over.
“That will be it,” she said mysteriously.
I seemed at first to divine that she (like all the professional actors who are employed here) speaking out of contempt for certain others who, without actually needing, but at the same time not despising an easy source of revenue, either from vanity or from predilection, or for some other reason, had managed to have their services accepted by the firm and to take their place among the actors, with no great difficulty, that supreme difficulty being eliminated which it would have been most arduous for them and perhaps impossible to overcome without a long training and a genuine aptitude, I mean the difficulty of speaking in public. We have a number of them at the Kosmograph who are real gentlemen, young fellows between twenty and thirty, either friends of some big shareholder on the Board, or shareholders themselves, who make a hobby of playing some part or other that has taken their fancy in a film, solely for their own amusement; and play their parts in the most gentlemanly fashion, some of them even with a grace that a real actor might envy.
But, reflecting afterwards on the mysterious tone in which she, her face suddenly clouding over, had uttered the words: “That will be it,” the suspicion occurred to me that perhaps she had heard the news that Aldo Nuti, I do not yet know from what part of the horizon, was trying to find an opening here.
This suspicion disturbed me not a little.
Why did she come to ask me, of all people, with Aldo Nuti in her mind, whether I believed that the actor’s profession was such that any animal might consider itself qualified, without preliminary training, to practise it? Did she then know of my friendship with Giorgio Mirelli?
I had not then, nor have I now any reason to think so. At least the questions with which I have adroitly plied her in the hope of enlightenment have brought me no certainty.
I do not know why, but I should dislike intensely her knowing that I was a friend of Giorgio Mirelli, in his boyhood, and a familiar inmate of the villa by Sorrento into which she brought confusion and death.
“I do not know why,” I have said: but it is not true; I do know why, and I have already given a hint of the reason. I feel no love, I repeat again, nor could I feel any, for this woman; hatred, if anything. Everyone hates her here; and that by itself would be an overwhelming reason for me not to hate her. Always, in judging other people, I have endeavoured to break the circle of my own affections, to gather from the clamour of life, composed more of tears than of laughter, as many notes as I could outside the chord of my own feelings. I knew Giorgio Mirelli; but how, in what capacity? Such as he was in his relations with me. He was the sort of person that I liked. But who, and what was he in his relations with this woman? The sort that she could like? I do not know. Certainly he was not, he could not be one and the same person to her and to myself. And how then am I to judge this woman by him? We have all of us a false conception of an individual whole. Every whole consists in the mutual relations of its constituent elements; which means that, by altering those relations however slightly, we are bound to alter the whole. This explains how some one who is reasonably loved by me can reasonably be hated by a third person. I who love and the other who hates are two: not only that, but the one whom I love, and the one whom the third person hates, are by no means identical; they are one and one: therefore they are two also. And we ourselves can never know what reality is accorded to us by other people; who we are to this person and to that.
Now, if the Nesteroff came to hear that I had been a great friend of Giorgio Mirelli, she would perhaps suspect me of a hatred for herself which I do not feel: and this suspicion would be enough to make her at once become another person to me, I myself remaining meanwhile in the same attitude towards her; she would assume in my eyes an aspect that would hide all the rest; and I should no longer be able to study her,as I am now studying her, as a whole.
I spoke to her of the tiger, of the feelings which its presence in this place and the fate in store for it aroused in me; but I at once became aware that she was not in a position to understand me, not perhaps because she was incapable of doing so, but because the relations that have grown up between her and the animal do not allow her to feel either pity for it or anger at the deed that is to be done.
Her answer was shrewd:
“A sham, yes; stupid too, if you like; but when the door of the cage is opened and the animal is driven into the other, bigger cage representing a glade in a forest, with the bars hidden by branches, the hunter, even if he is a sham like the forest, will still be entitled to defend himself against it, simply because it, as you say, is not a sham animal but a real one.”
“But that is just where the harm lies,” I exclaimed: “in using a real animal where everything else is a sham.”
“Where do you get that?” she promptly rejoined. “The part of the hunter will be a sham; but when he is face to face with this ‘real’ animal he will be a ‘real’ man! And I can assure you that if he does not kill it with his first shot, or does not wound it so as to bring it down, it will not stop to think that the hunter is a sham and the hunt a sham, but will spring upon him and ‘really’ tear a ‘real’ man to pieces.”
I smiled at the acuteness of her logic and said:
“But who will have wished such a thing. Look at her as she lies there. She knows nothing, the beautiful creature, she is not to blame for her ferocity.”
There was a strange look in her eyes, as though she suspected that I was trying to make fun of her; then she smiled as well, shrugged her shoulders slightly and went on:
“Do you feel is to deeply! Tame her! Make her a stage tiger, trained to sham death at a sham bullet from a sham hunter, and then all will be right.”
We should never have come to an under-standing; because if my sympathies were with the tiger, hers were with the hunter.
In fact, the hunter appointed to kill the animal is Carlo Ferro. The Nestoroff must be greatly upset by this; and perhaps she comes here not, as her enemies assert, to study her part, but to estimate the risk which her lover will be running.
He too, for all that he shews a scornful indifference, must, in his heart of hearts, feel apprehensive. I know that, in conversation with the General Manager, Commendator Borgalli, and also upstairs in the office, he has put forward a number of claims: the insurance of his life for at least one hundred thousand lire, to be paid to his parents in Sicily, in the event of his death, which heaven forbid; another insurance, for a more modest sum, in the event of his being incapacitated for work by any serious injury, which heaven forbid also; a handsome bonus, if everything, as is to be hoped, turns out well, and lastly–a curious claim, and one that was certainly not suggested, like the rest, by a lawyer–the skin of the dead tiger.
The tigerskin is presumably for the Nestoroff; for her little feet; a costly rug. Oh, she must certainly have warned her lover, with prayers and entreaties, against undertaking so dangerous a part; but then, seeing him determined and bound by contract, she must, she and no one else, have suggested to Ferro that he should claim ‘at least’ the skin of the tiger. “At least?” you say. Why, yes! That she used the words “at least” seems to me beyond question. ‘At least’, that is to say in compensation for the tense anxiety that she must feel for the risk to which he will be exposing himself. It is not possible that the idea can have originated with him, Carlo Ferro, of having the skin of the dead animal to spread under the little feet of his mistress. Carlo Ferro is incapable of such an idea. You have only to look at him to be convinced of it; look at that great black hairy arrogant goat’s head on his shoulders.
He appeared, the other day, and interrupted my conversation with the Nestoroff in front of the cage. He did not even trouble to inquire what we were discussing, as though a conversation with myself could not be of the slightest importance to him. He barely glanced at me, barely raised Ms bamboo cane to the brim of Ms hat in sign of greeting, looked with Ms usual contemptuous indifference at the tiger in the cage, saying to his mistress:
“Come along: Polacco is ready; he is waiting for us.”
And he turned his back, confident of being followed by the Nestoroff, as a tyrant by Ms slave.
No one feels or shews so much as he that instinctive antipathy, which as I have said is shared by almost all the actors for myself, and which is to be explained, or so at least I explain it, as an effect, which they themselves do not see clearly, of my profession.
Carlo Ferro feels it more strongly than any of them, because, among all his other advantages, he has that of seriously believing himself to be a great actor.
Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (16)
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: -Shoot!
Boris Pasternak
(1890–1960)
Poetry
Yes, I shall swear by you, my verse,
I shall wheeze out, before I swoon:
You’re not a tenor’s shape and voice,
You’re summer travelling third class,
You are a suburb, not a tune.
You’re a street as close as May,
You’re a battlefield at night,
Where clouds groan loudly in dismay
And scatter, when dismissed, in fright.
And, splitting in the railway’s lace-
That’s outskirts, not refrain and home-
They crawl back to their native place
Without a song, as if struck dumb.
The shower’s offshoots stick in clusters
Till break of day, and all the time
They scribble on the roofs acrostics
And bubble up rhyme after rhyme.
All poetry is what you make it.
And even when the truism’s not worth
The rhyme, the flow of verse is scared.
The notebook’s open-so flow forth!
Boris Pasternak poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive O-P, Pasternak, Boris
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