De Amerikaanse dichteres, vertaalster en hoogleraar Taije Silverman werd geboren in San Francisco op 13 augustus 1974. Zie ook alle tags voor Taije Silverman op dit blog.
Grief
Let it be seeds.
Let it be the slow tornado of seeds from the oak tree
by the gates to the playground in May wind.
Today is mother’s day and someone said it is almost impossible
to remember something before you know the word for it
and the babies in their mothers’ arms
stare at the seeds and they don’t know
the word for falling. Nor the word for sudden or whirling.
Let it be something that doesn’t last, not the moon.
Let it not be the rooftops that are so quiet.
Let it come to the white doorstep like rain and slide
onto the sidewalk not knowing. What is gentle if not time
but it’s not time that is gentle, what will happen in the future
does not matter. Cicadas underground are called nymphs
and their wings look like tree seeds. Trapped under skin
and as soft as the dirt that surrounds them.
Teneral is a word for the days between
when the cicada digs its way out of earth and begins to sing
and when its self and shell are still
a single, susceptible thing. It is impossible
to remember. Let it be the years
underground, molting nymph skin
and moving in the soil without sound.
It’s not time that is gentle but what unknown sign,
a method of counting each spring through the roots of a tree.
How they learn from the taste of a root’s juice the moment
when in one rush they should push up to earth.
Teneral, meaning not yet hardened, a sense before a memory
of the shell. Let it be the sign in the cells
of the blind safe skin, the limbo of gold
walling here and there, where the baby waits
between a mother’s body and the air’s tears, he came
to my breast and rested, there was no before.
Let it be the gold room with its lack of door, that time
of day, cicadas will wait until sunset to break through the dirt.
Where did he go while I pushed? Let it be.
We stood in the tunnel of seeds, windmills, a tree
had come to make promises. Rain to stone, rain to street.
They seemed while they fell to be lifting and we waited, watching,
the baby without words for what we were seeing.
Seeds pushing roots, brick, and dirt don’t say
what they know about time. Rise. For days the whole town will sing.
De Oostenrijkse dichter Nikolaus Lenau werd geboren op 13 augustus 1802 in Csatád (in het Hongaarse deel van Oostenrijk-Hongarije). Zie ook alle tags voor Nikolaus Lenau op dit blog.
Eenzaamheid II
De wind is vreemd, waait langs je buiten mate.
De steen is dood. Jij zult slechts koelte erven.
Geen woord van troost zul jij van hem verwerven,
Noch kan het bleke rood van rozen baten.
Zij gaan je zonder acht op jou verlaten,
Alleen bekommerd om hun eigen sterven.
Loop verder: overal groet je verderven
In de van schepselen verstoken straten.
Jij ziet ze hier en daar uit hutten kijken.
Zij slaan de luiken dicht. Jij gaat voorbij.
Jij beeft van top tot teen: de hutten wijken.
Geen liefde en geen God. De weg bevriest.
De wind jaagt ijzig door de straat. En jij? –
De hele wereld is wanhopig triest.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Nikolaus Lenau door Friedrich Amerling, 19e eeuw
Zie voor de schrijvers van de 13e augustus ook mijn blog van 13 augustus 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 13 augustus 2019 en ook mijn blog van 13 augustus 2016 en ook mijn blog van 13 augustus 2011 deel 2.