De Ierse dichter Michael Longley werd geboren op 27 juli 1939 in Belfast. Zie ook alle tags voor Michael Longley op dit blog.
Amelia’s Poem
Amelia, your newborn name
Combines with the midwife’s word
And, like smoke from driftwood fires,
Wafts over the lochside rood
Post the wattle byre – hoy boles
For ponies, Silver and Whisper –
Between drystone walls’ river-
Rounded moss-clad ferny stones,
Through the fenceless gate and gorse
To the flat erratic boulder
Where otters and your mother rest,
Sproints black os your meconium,
Fish bones, fish scales, shirty sequins
Reflecting what light remains.
Harmonica
A tommy drops his harmonica in No Man’s land.
My dad like old Anaximines breathes in and out
Through the holes and reeds and finds his melody.
Our souls are air. They hold us together. Listen.
A music-hall favourite lasts until the end of time.
My dad is playing it. His breath contains the world.
The wind is playing an orchestra of harmonicas.
Between Hovers
And not even when we ran over the badger
Did he tell me he had cancer, Joe O’Toole
Who was psychic about carburettor and clutch
And knew a folk cure for the starter-engine.
Backing into the dark we floodlit each hair
Like a filament of light our lights had put out
Somewhere between Kinnadoohy and Thallabaun.
I dragged it by two gritty paws into the ditch.
Joe spotted a ruby where the canines touched.
His way of seeing me safely across the duach
Was to leave his porch light burning, its sparkle
Shifting from widgeon to teal on Corragaun lake.
I missed his funeral. Close to the stony roads
He lies in Killeen Churchyard over the hill.
This morning on the burial mound at Templedoomore
Encircled by a spring tide and taking in
Cloonaghmanagh and Claggan and Carrigskeewaun,
The townlands he’d wandered tending cows and sheep,
I watched a dying otter gaze right through me
at the islands in Clew Boy, as though it were only
Between hovers and not too far from the holt.
Parende zwanen
Zelfs nu wou ik dat je erbij was geweest
Naast me zittend op de oever van de rivier:
De zwaan en het wijfje die gelijkop gleden,
Tot de smalle hoofden elkaar raakten en het laatste
Heraldisch moment oploste in rimpelingen.
Dit was een huwelijk en een doop,
Een adem inhouden, bijna een verdrinken,
Gespreide vleugels zorgden voor evenwicht waar hij trapte,
Haar verenkleed vol water en haar nek
Onder water als een staaf van licht.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e juli ook mijn blog van 27 juli 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 27 juli 2018 en ook mijn blog van 27 juli 2017 en ook mijn blog van 27 juli 2011 deel 2.