De Britse dichter en schrijver Dannie Abse werd geboren op 22 september 1923 in Cardiff, Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 22 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Dannie Abse op dit blog.
Last Words
Splendidly, Shakespeare’s heroes,
Shakespeare’s heroines, once the spotlight’s on,
enact every night, with such grace, their verbose deaths.
Then great plush curtains, then smiling resurrection
to applause – and never their good looks gone.
The last recorded words too
of real kings, real queens, all the famous dead,
are but pithy pretences, quotable fictions
composed by anonymous men decades later,
never with ready notebooks at the bed.
Most do not know who they are
when they die or where they are, country or town,
nor which hand on their brow. Some clapped-out actor may
imagine distant clapping, bow, but no real queen
will sigh, ‘Give me my robe, put on my crown.’
Death scenes not life-enhancing,
death scenes not beautiful nor with breeding;
yet bravo Sydney Carton, bravo Duc de Chavost
who, euphoric beside the guillotine, turned down
the corner of the page he was reading.
And how would I wish to go?
Not as in opera – that would offend –
nor like a blue-eyed cowboy shot and short of words,
but finger-tapping still our private morse,’…love you,’
before the last flowers and flies descend.
Ask the Moon
1
Wakeful past 3 a.m.
near the frontiers of Nothing
it’s easy, so easy
to imagine (like William Blake)
an archaic angel standing askew
in a cone of light
not of this world;
easy at this cheating hour
to believe an angel cometh
to touch babies’ skulls,
their fontanelles,
deleting the long memory
of generations—
the genesis of déjà vu;
easy to conceive angel-light
bright as that sudden
ordinary window
I saw at midnight
across the road
before the drawing of a blind.
Dannie Abse (Cardiff, 22 september 1923 – 28 september 2014)
Portret door Peter Douglas Edwards, 1980
De Nederlandse dichter, schrijver en criticus Lodewijk van Deyssel werd geboren op 22 september 1864 in Amsterdam. Zie ook mijn blog van 22 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Lodewijk van Deyssel op dit blog.
Oorlogsbegin
Een blanke hemel welft zich over ’t land,
Waar stoere boeren van den arbeid keeren
En knapen zingend loopen hand aan hand.
Vast in den vrede, dien geen angst kon deren,
Verdonkren de gezichten, die zich keeren
Van waar de zon nog flauw in ’t Westen brandt
Achter het hooge bergkam-woud, als speren
En bajonetten, dreigend zwart, geplant.
Nu denken die rouw-donkrë aangezichten
Om ’t zacht verlichte raam in verre laan,
Om d’avondspijs, zoo vroolijk aangebracht…
Tot bij de dalbocht plots uit vlakte-nacht,
Waar, als bouwvallen, vreemd de huizen staan,
Laayende purpergloed ze komt verlichten
Augustus 1914. – België
De morgen grauwt in scheemring door het dal.
Door heete stilte klinkt dag en nacht voort,
Met staâge slage’ als donder nooit gehoord,
De wederkaatsende kanonnen-schal.
Diep in den donkren grond gegraven zal,
Wijl ’t bommenploffen rund en paard vermoordt,
De troep zijn eigen lieven grond nu voor ’t
Laatste verdeedgen tegen d’overval.
O mannen die, in duister vuil vertoevend,
Naast starre vrouwe’ en kindren hulpbehoevend,
’t Rein harte sterk in ’t lijdend lijf behield,
Als louter goud in stik-donkere mijnen,
Kwam uwe kracht mijn kwijnend volk verschijnen,
Gij, die den dood geproefd hadt vóor gij vielt…
Lodewijk van Deyssel (22 september 1864 – 26 januari 1952)
In 1881
De Australische singer / songwriter, dichter, schrijver en acteur Nicholas Edward Cave werd geboren in Warracknabeal op 22 september 1957. Zie ook alle tags voor Nick Cave op dit blog.
Red Right Hand
Take a little walk to the edge of town, go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom, as it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires,
Hey man you know you’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with a red right hand.
He’ll wrap you in his arms tell you that you’ve been a good boy
He’ll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy.
He’ll reach deep in a hole, steal your shrinking soul
but there wont be a single thing that you can do
He’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a ghost, he’s a guru
They’re whispering his name though this disapearing land
But hidden in his coat is a red right hand
You dont own no money? He’ll get you some
You don’t have no car? he’ll get you one
You dont have no self respect you feel like an insect,
Well dont you worry buddy coz here he comes
Through the ghettos and the barrio and the bowery and the slums
A shadow is cast whereever he stands
Stacks of green paper in his red right hand
You’ll see him in your nightmares, you’ll see him in your dreams
He’ll appear out of no where but he aint what he seems
You’ll see him in your head, on the TV screen
And hey buddy, Im warning you to turn it off
He’s a ghost, he’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a guru
You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
designed and directed by his red right hand.
Nick Cave (Warracknabeal , 22 september 1957)
De Britse schrijfster Fay Weldon werd geboren op 22 september 1931 in Alvechurch, Engeland. Zie ook mijn blog van 22 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Fay Weldon op dit blog.
Uit: Weekend
“By seven-thirty they were ready to go. Martha had everything packed into the car and the three children appropriately dressed and in the back seat, complete with educational games and wholewheat biscuits.
When everything was ready in the car Martin would switch off the television, come downstairs, lock up the house, front and back, and take the wheel.
Weekend! Only two hours’ drive down to the cottage on Friday evenings: three hours’ drive back on Sunday nights. The pleasures of greenery and guests in between. They reckoned themselves fortunate, how fortunate!
On Fridays Martha would get home on the bus at six-twelve and prepare tea and sandwiches for the family: then she would strip four beds and put the sheets and quilt covers in the washing machine for Monday: take the country bedding from the airing basket plus the books and the games, plus the weekend food – acquired at intervals throughout the week, to lessen the load – plus her own folder of work from the office, plus Martin’s drawing materials (she was a market researcher in an advertising agency, he a freelance designer) plus hairbrushes, jeans, spare T-shirts, Jolyon’s antibiotics (he suffered from sore throats), Jenny’s recorder, Jasper’s cassette player and so on – ah, the so on! – and would pack them, skilfully and quickly, into the boot. Very little could be left in the cottage during the week. (‘An open invitation to burglars’: Martin) Then Martha would run round the house tidying and wiping, doing this and that, finding the cat at one neighbour’s and delivering it to another, while the others ate their tea; and would usually, proudly, have everything finished by the time they had eaten their fill. Martin would just catch the BBC2 news, while Martha cleared away the tea table, and the children tossed up for the best positions in the car. ‘Martha,’ said Martin, tonight, ‘you ought to get Mrs Hodder to do more. She takes advantage of you.’
Fay Weldon (Alvechurch, 22 september 1931)
De Hongaarse dichter en schrijver György Faludy werd geboren op 22 september 1910 in Boedapest. Zie ook mijn blog van 22 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor György Faludy op dit blog.
Losing My Sight?
Last night again I read, as I often do,
some poetry in bed until very late.
It’s 10 a.m. A brilliant winter sky.
Light and broken clouds in disarray.
My spirit soars. I raise an arm towards them
(in an appropriate greeting to the brightness)
until I pause and freeze and shudder frightened:
for I see my hand, but not my fingertips.
Above the divan, I note that the silver frame
Of the Italian painting is slightly bent on one side.
I leap from the bed excited. As I finger the frame:
it never has been straighter than today.
I settle at the table and reach for the papers, in
a casual gesture in my plight, despite
not just a fear, despite the foreknowledge that this
unfolding horror is only about to begin.
I can still negotiate the banner headlines
but not the standard size print, as the tiny writing
blurs into a lengthy dirt-grey smudge on the white
without a single letter that I can distinguish.
I’ve been excluded from the delight of reading.
I cannot tell whose letter is put in my hand.
I cannot even read what I have written, and
I might as well discard my own library.
So that’s how it is. Yet, will I have the strength
to pursue my poetry still, on losing my sight?
What will become of me? I walk my path,
the crutch upon my left. At right, the wife.
Vertaald door Thomas Land
György Faludy (22 september 1910 – 1 september 2006)
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Hans Leip werd geboren op 22 september 1893 in Hamburg. Zie ook alle tags voor Hans Leip op dit blog.
Uit: Godekes Knecht (Nawoord)
“Ich bin kein Geschichtsprofessor; dennoch ahne ich, daß Europa um 1400 voller Unruhe war. Die Mischung aus Morgenland und Abendland, Christentum genannt, war auch damals noch nicht zur Klärung gediehen. Lange hatten die Kreuzzüge als Ableiter gedient, bis Türken und Mongolen die östlichen Luftlöcher verstopften. Da schlägt die Gärung nach innen. Sie wird befeuert durch den heiteren Schall, der von Süden tönt, wo man die Antike wiederentdeckt. Doch von Norden bricht ihm ein ätzender Schall entgegen, die Stimme Wiclifs, zu Oxford, in dem sich die vielartigen Ansätze der Vorreformationen sammeln. Um das abbröckelnde lateinische Weltreich der Kirche streiten sich drei Päpste. In Frankreich krönt man einen Schwachsinnigen. Deutschland hat keinen Kaiser. Die drei nordischen Reiche vereinigt ein tatkräftiges Weib, die schwarze Magret, unter dem dänischen Zepter. Im übrigen purzelt ein bunter Flickenkasten kleiner Herrschaften durcheinander. Das Schießpulver ist erfunden. Die Geldwirtschaft beginnt. Die Ordnung der Gewerkschaften erhebt sich ins Glorreiche. Adel und geistlichkeit stehen in Gefahr, vor der Macht der Kaufmannschaft und der Kraft des Handwerkstandes zu verblassen.“
Hans Leip (22 september 1893 – 6 juni 1983)
Zie voor nog meer schrijves van de 22e september ook mijn blog van 22 september 2013 deel 2.