De Duitser schrijver Patrick Süskind werd geboren in Ambach op 26 maart 1949. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

Uit: Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer

“Ein Jahr später lernte ich Rad fahren. Das war nicht eben früh, denn ich maß schon einen Meter fünfunddreißig, wog zweiunddreißig Kilo und hatte Schuhgröße zweiunddreißigeinhalb. Aber das Radfahren hat mich nie besonders interessiert. Diese schwankende Fortbewegungsweise auf nichts als zwei dünnen Rädern kam mir zutiefst unsolide, ja unheimlich vor, denn es konnte mir niemand erklären, weshalb ein Fahrrad im Ruhezustand sofort umfiel, wofern es nicht gestützt, angelehnt oder von jemandem festgehalten wurde – NICHT aber umfallen sollte, wenn sich ein zweiunddreißig Kilogramm schwerer Mensch darauf setzte und ohne jede Stütze oder Anlehnung damit herumfuhr. Die diesem wundersamen Phänomen zugrunde liegenden Naturgesetze, nämlich die Kreiselgesetze und insbesondere der sogenannte mechanische Drehimpulserhaltungssatz, waren mir damals völlig unbekannt, und selbst heute begreife ich sie noch nicht ganz, und allein das Wort „mechanischer Drehimpulserhaltungssatz“ ist mir nicht geheuer und verwirrt mich derart, dass die bewusste Stelle an meinem Hinterkopf zu kribbeln und zu klopfen anfängt.“

 

 

Patrick Süskind (Ambach, 26 maart 1949)

 

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Erica Jong werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1942. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

Another Language

The whole world is flat
& I am round.
Even women avert their eyes,
& men, embarrassed
by the messy way
that life turns into life,
look away,
forgetting they themselves
were once this roundness
underneath the heart,
this helpless fish
swimming in eternity.

The sound of O,
not the sound of I
embarrasses the world.
My friends, who voluntarily have made
their bodies flat,
their writings flat as grief,
look at me in disbelief.
What is this large unseemly thing–
a pregnant poet?
an enormous walking O?
Oh take all the letters of the alphabet but that!
We speak the Esperanto of the flat!

Condemned to sign
language & silence, pregnant poems
for men to snicker at,
for women to denounce,
I live alone.
My world is round
& bounded by the mountain of my fear;
while all the great geographers agree
the world is flat
& roundness cannot be.

 

His Silence

He still wears the glass skin of childhood.
Under his hands, the stones turn mirrors.
His eyes are knives.

Who froze the ground to his feet?
Who locked his mo
uth into an horizon?
Why does the sun set when we touch?

I look for the lines between the silences.
He looks only for the silences.

Cram this page under his tongue.
Open him as if for surgery.
Let the red knife love slide in.

Erica Jong (New York, 26 maart 1942)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

Destiny

They deliver the edicts of God
without delay
And are exempt from apprehension
from detention
And with their God-given
Petasus, Caduceus, and Talaria
ferry like bolts of lightning
unhindered between the tribunals
of Space & Time

The Messenger-Spirit
in human flesh
is assigned a dependable,
self-reliant, versatile,
thoroughly poet existence
upon its sojourn in life

It does not knock
or ring the bell
or telephone
When the Messenger-Spirit
comes to your door
though locked
It’ll enter like an electric midwife
and deliver the message

There is no tell
throughout the ages

that a Messenger-Spirit
ever stumbled into darkness.

 

I am 25

With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
has gone from ear to ear:
I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying:–I did those then
but that was then
that was then–
O I would quiet old men
say to them:–I am your friend
what you once were, thru me
you’ll be again–
Then at night in the confidence of their homes
rip out their apology-tongues
and steal their poems.

 

Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Lee Frost werd geboren op 26 maart 1874 in San Francisco. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

 

A Patch of Old Snow

 

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten–
If I ever read it.

 

 

Tree at my Window

 

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost  (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963)

 

 

De Engelse dichter Alfred Edward Housman werd geboren op 26 maart 1859 in  Fockbury, Worcestershire. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

 

Now, of my three score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

 

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

 

 

 

You smile upon your friend to-day

You smile upon your friend to-day,

  To-day his ills are over;

You hearken to the lover’s say,

  And happy is the lover.

 

‘Tis late to hearken, late to smile,

  But better late than never;

I shall have lived a little while

  Before I die for ever.

 

 

Easter hymn

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

A. E. Housman (26 maart 1859 – 30 april 1936)

 

 De Amerikaanse schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus (Mississippi op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007.

Blue Song

I am tired

I am tired of speech and of action

If you should meet me upon a

street do not question me for

I can tell you only my name

and the name of the town I was

born in — But that is enough

It does not matter whether tomorrow

arrives anymore. If there is

only this night and after it is

morning it will not matter now.

I am tired. I am tired of speech

and of action. In the heart of me

you will find a tiny handful of

dust. Take it and blow it out

upon the wind. Let the wind have

it and it will find its way home.

 

 

 

My litle one

My little one whose tongue is dumb,
whose fingers cannot hold to things,
who is so mercilessly young,
he leaps upon the instant things,

I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
He runs into the burning wood.
Follow, follow if you can!
He will come out grown to a man

and not remember whom he kissed,
who caught him by the slender wrist
and bound him by a tender yoke
which, understanding not, he broke.

Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)