De Duitse dichter en schrijver Bodo Morshäuserwerd geboren op 28 februari 1953 in Berlijn. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2010.
HERBST (1978)
Angelangt bei der Verteidigung der Verfassung.
Keine Metapher jetzt zum Winter der kommt!
Letzte Sonne auf betonierter Erde:
nicht zu beschreiben. Mit diesem Wahnsinn
sind wir verwandt ohne Frage.
Wald nun, und Bäume, ein Fest der Zynik.
Leises Grollen hinter den Bergen, vor der Stadt.
Funken sprühen dort, wo geschweißt wird,
mit Maske, aus Not, für kein Wunschkind mehr.
Krieg ist nur ein anderes Wort.
Und wie viele Blätter fallen erst gar nicht mehr!
Wieviel Papier an den Litfaßsäulen:
prophetische Hinweise auf die zwanziger Jahre.
Nach welchem Knochen springst du, Enkelkind,
sind sie nicht vergeben?
Wie viele alte Männer, denen ich nicht verzeih,
daß ich sie nicht verstehen soll,
Trümmerväter, Trümmermütter, endlich satt
und mitverschluckt alle Erinnerung an morgen.
Die letzten der Geschichte ziehen das Holzbein an,
stemmen sich mit Stöcken von der Weltbank hoch,
legen die Binde um den Arm.
Erzähl mir was vom Krieg!“
Bodo Morshäuser (Berlijn, 28 februari 1953)
Berlijn, Jugenstilmuseum
De Ierse dichter John Montaguewerd geboren in New York op 28 februari 1929. Zie ookmijn blog van 28 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2010.
A Grafted Tongue
(Dumb,
bloodied, the severed
head now chokes to
speak another tongue –
As in
a long suppressed dream,
some stuttering garb –
led ordeal of my own)
An Irish
child weeps at school
repeating its English.
After each mistake
The master
gouges another mark
on the tally stick
hung about its neck
Like a bell
on a cow, a hobble
on a straying goat.
To slur and stumble
In shame
the altered syllables
of your own name:
to stray sadly home
And find
the turf-cured width
of your parents’ hearth
growing slowly alien:
In cabin
and field, they still
speak the old tongue.
You may greet no one.
To grow
a second tongue, as
harsh a humiliation
as twice to be born.
Decades later
that child’s grandchild’s
speech stumbles over lost
syllables of an old order.
John Montague (New York, 28 februari 1929)
De Amerikaanse schrijver en historicus Dee Brown werd geboren op 28 februari 1908 in Alberta, Louisiana. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2010.
Uit: The Way To Bright Star
„Thinking about the circus coming to town led me to pull out this shoe box full of faded photographs that I keep in the bottom drawer of Old Man Fagerhalt’s desk. I have not looked at them for a long time, maybe a year or more. I just now found my favorite, the one of Queen Elizabeth Jones, of course, and there she is—in her white riding tights, her golden hair done up halo style, her lips parted in that joyful smile that is like none I’ve ever seen on any other human being’s face.
In the picture she is standing in front of those two damned camels. Those poor cursed evil-smelling beasts! Detest them I did, but it was they that brought me to Queen Elizabeth Jones, placing me in debt to them forever.
I would like to brood over the picture and dream again of the time and place where it was made and the life I led then. But I hear Hilda Fagerhalt out in the hardware store chattering with a customer, and I know that any minute now she will be traipsing down the hall, her slippers slapping on the hard boards, thrusting her Swedish head through the open door to remind me sharply to prepare an order for that keg of ten-penny nails I forgot about. “Remember the post office closes at six o’clock, Ben, and don’t forget the horse collars for Jack Bilbrew’s dray teams, either.”
I call her Fagerhalt, but she’s used my name, Butterfield, since Old Man Fagerhalt caught her in bed with me. And me at the time with a leg so badly shattered I knew I’d never ride in the circus again with Queen Elizabeth Jones. When Hilda crawled into my bed, she was only trying to comfort me and ease the cruel pain of mending bones. She is a great comforter, I’ll allow that. But Old Man Fagerhalt saw me as the spoiler of his daughter’s virtue, although she was the one who came into the bed. Maybe he just wanted to get her married and off his hands.
The desk before which I sit—this handmade oaken desk with its innumerable cubbyholes filled with useless papers and trinkets—Hilda now refers to as mine, although I will always think of it as Old Man Fagerhalt’s desk even though he has long been interred in Mount Holly cemetery out on Broadway.“
Dee Brown (28 februari 1908 – 12 december 2002)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Daniel Handlerwerd geboren op 28 februari 1970 in San Francisco, Californië. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2010.
Uit: Watch Your Mouth
„Because this is, you know, an opera. Fiction, like all operas: a lie, but a lie is sort of a myth, and a myth is sort of a truth. All summer long I was watching things happen with Cynthia Glass and her family that were melodramatic, heart-wrenching, and absurdly — truly — tragic. Dire consequences lurked around their house like the growl of cellos when the jealous fiance´, or the enraged father, or the Old Spirit of the Mountains descends on the lovers, flushed with horniness and the effort of singing over a fifty-piece orchestra: La Forza Dei Glasses. Le Nozze Di Incest. Cyn. They were an opera and now the lights are lowering and here we are, reader or readers. No need to stress. An opera in book form is more convenient than the real thing, because you can eat when you want and wear whatever pleases you. Nothing, maybe. Read it alone in bed, the sheets lingering on your bare belly, your hips. Read it when no one’s watching. Go ahead.
I know there are some operas that start right up, but this isn’t one of them. Like Beethoven, whose only opera clears its throat with not one but four possible overtures, I’ve written a bunch of openings, all introducing the subject matters and what surrounds them. As somebody said in a book I’ve since lost, all behavior exists within a social and cultural context, so I hope these overtures will not exactly influence you, but tap you on the shoulder to get you looking in the right direction. Their purpose is similar to those hyphened taxonomies you can find clinging to the back of the title page like mold on a shower curtain, infecting your naked and vulnerable skin. You know the words I mean. I know that deep down you know what I’m talking about. Those Library of Congress things:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — Fiction
Our story begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where, the guidebooks would have it, ?geography demanded a city.? As if rich river-soaked land wanted nothing better than a bunch of greyed-out buildings dumped on it. The Ohio River is born where the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet in a wet intersection of sludgy vowels..“
Daniel Handler (San Francisco, 28 februari 1970)