De Amerikaanse schrijfster Lauren Groff werd geboren op 23 juli 1978 in Cooperstown, New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Lauren Groff op dit blog.
Uit: Fates and Furies
“A QUESTION OF VISION. From the sun’s seat, after all, humanity is an abstraction. Earth a mere spinning blip. Closer, the city a knot of light between other knots; even closer, and buildings gleamed, slowly separating. Dawn in the windows revealed bodies, all the same. Only with focus came specifics, mole by nostril, tooth stuck to a dry bot-tom lip in sleep, the papery skin of an armpit. Lotto poured cream into coffee and woke his wife. A song played on the tape deck, eggs were fried, dishes washed, floors swept. Beer and ice carried in, snacks prepared. By midafternoon, all was shining, ready. “Nobody’s here yet. We could—” Lotto said into Mathilde’s ear. He pulled her long hair away from her nape, kissed the knob of bone there. The neck was his, belonging to the wife who was his, shining, under his hands. Love that had begun so powerfully in the body had spread luxuriantly into everything. They had been together for five weeks. The first, there had been no sex, Mathilde a tease. Then came the week-end camping trip and the besotted first time and the morning piss where he found his junk bloodied stem to stern and he knew she’d been a virgin, that she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him because of it. He turned to her in the new light, dipping her face in the frigid stream to wash it, coming up cheeks flushed and glazed with water, and he knew her to be the purest person he’d ever met, he, who had been primed for purity. He knew then they would elope, they would graduate, they would go to live in the city and be happy together there. And they were happy, if still strange to each other. Yesterday, he’d found she was allergic to sushi. This morning, when he was talking to his aunt on the telephone, he’d watched Mathilde toweling off out of the shower and it struck him hard that she had no family at all. The little she spoke of childhood was shadowed with abuse. He’d imagined it vividly: poverty, beat-up trailer, spiteful—she implied worse—uncle. Her most vivid memories of her childhood were of the television that was never turned off. Salvation of school, scholarship, modeling for spare change. They had begun to accrete stories between them. How, when she was small, isolated in the country, she’d been so lonely that she let a leech live on her inner thigh for a week. How she’d been discovered for modeling by a gargoyle of a man on a train. It must have taken an immense force of will for Mathilde to turn her past, so sad and dark, blank behind her. Now she had only him. It moved him to know that for her he was everything. He wouldn’t ask for more than she’d willingly give. Outside, a New York June day steamed. Soon there’d be the party, dozens of college friends descending on them for the housewarming, though the house was already sizzling with summer.”
De Ierse dichter Michael Longley werd geboren op 27 juli 1939 in Belfast. Zie ook alle tags voor Michael Longley op dit blog.
HET WESTEN
Onder een gloeikousje dat de motten bestoken,
Licht dat verpulvert bij aanraking, stoffige vleugels,
Ik luister naar nieuws door het ruisen heen,
Een geknetter van zeegras, wervelend drijfhout,
Golven als ver verkeer, nieuws van thuis,
Of kijk naar mezelf, als door een zanderige lens,
Hoe ik verschijn uit de hitte-glinstering
En voor altijd mijn weg vind langs
Het pad naar dit huisje, de ramen,
Muren, zon- en maanwijzers, thuis-van-huis.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 23e juli ook mijn blog van 23 juli 2019 en ook mijn blog van 23 juli 2018 en ook mijn blog van 23 juli 2017 deel 2.