De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Edward Estlin Cummings werd geboren in Cambridge, Massachusetts op 14 oktober 1894. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor E. E. Cummings op dit blog.
As Is The Sea Marvelous
as is the sea marvelous
from god’s
hands which sent her forth
to sleep upon the world
and the earth withers
the moon crumbles
one by one
stars flutter into dust
but the sea
does not change
and she goes forth out of hands and
she returns into hands
and is with sleep….
love,
the breaking
of your
soul
upon
my lips
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
My Mind Is
my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am
becoming something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet
bellowings.
E. E. Cummings (14 oktober 1894 – 3 september 1962)
Als student in Harvard, 1915
De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Maarten van der Graaff werd geboren op 14 oktober 1987 in Dirksland. Zie ook alle tags voor Maarten van der Graaf op dit blog.
Najaren van vettig Europa
Ik doe het loopje van de dood na.
Vanaf de canapé zie ik het grofvuil met mijn
leesstrategieën vertrekken.
Ik zwaai niet.
De ochtend is een verslinder, zeker,
maar zo tergend traag.
Ik doe het loopje van de ochtend na.
Ik zak weg. Ik loer.
Vanaf de canapé zie ik het grofvuil de straat inrijden
en mijn leesstrategieën, verregend, haast onherkenbaar,
op de stoep terugzetten.
Fluitconcert
Dunne bundels zijn voor dichters
zoals de lullige astmatische dood
hoe klinkt dat?
maak dat eens zintuiglijk
hoe ruikt dat?
een vrucht in de jeugd gegeten wordt op de tong van de lezer
gematerialiseerd
hocus pocus wij zijn allemaal mensen
neem en eet
wij zijn allemaal droef
in essentie
de rest zijn accidenten
natie en humeur
Maarten van der Graaff (Dirksland, 14 oktober 1987)
De Hongaarse schrijver Péter Nádas werd geboren op 14 oktober 1942 in Boedapest. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Péter Nádas op dit blog.
Uit: Parallel Stories (Vertaald door Imre Goldstein)
“The ever-present moment proved more powerful and, under its weight, stories that had been told blissfully lost importance. As though they could simply be forgotten, so many backdrops of sound to be drawn to one side, small noises from the passage of history.
True, there was nowhere for them to put the champagne flutes. They stared into the piano, the hammers working away on the strings, the reflections on the black lacquer of the open top.
Anything but having to look at each other.
The first sign they noticed was that Kristóf’s knee touched Klára’s knee even though he would do anything but move and he really had not meant this to happen. He said sorry and seemed genuinely contrite about being ill-mannered. If this had only been the first time this happened between them it might have been alright but it was not. The vacuum that emerged between the two knees, once he had rapidly withdrawn his, was powerful enough to suck up the totality of bodily sensation and eat up their bodily being, clothes and all.
Their pitiable separateness was over. Or they could only have traced along the surface of each other’s body that which had already happened in their soul, which their conscious minds had not accepted – all of this they could not know.
It is quite probably the soul first, then the sensation and finally the decision.
After some period of time, the length of which they could not have accounted for, but it was not the first stretch of time that filled itself with them, now Klára’s knee touched Kristóf’s knee and it was her turn to apologise quickly. It was mainly her breeding that spoke. In all honesty they might have laughed, but they did not. Immersed in earnest silence they continued to skim and scan, to weigh and to explore one another, pushing well beyond the realm of reason.
They seemed to be trying to gauge what is invisible to the naked eye, what the naked hand cannot avert. There was no chance of coming to an end, a succession of small surprises, they marvelled with their pupils wide open. »
Péter Nádas (Boedapest,14 oktober 1942)
De Amerikaanse dichteres, essayiste, critica en feministe Katha Pollitt werd geboren op 14 oktober 1949 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Katha Pollit op dit blog.
Turning Thirty
This spring, you’d swear it actually gets dark earlier.
At the elegant new restaurants downtown
your married friends lock glances over the walnut torte:
it’s ten o’clock. The have important jobs
and go to bed before midnight. Only you
walking alone up the dazzling avenue
still feel a girl’s excitement, for the thousandth time
you enter your life as though for the first time,
as an immigrant enters a huge, mysterious capital:
Paris, New York. So many wide plazas, so many marble addresses!
Home, you write feverishly
in all five notebooks at once, then faint into bed
dazed with ambition and too many cigarettes.
Well, what’s wrong with that? Nothing, except
really you don’t believe wrinkles mean character
and know it’s an ominous note
that the Indian skirts flapping on the sidewalk racks
last summer looked so gay you wanted them all
but now are marked clearer than price tags: not for you.
Oh, what were you doing, why weren’t you paying attention
that piercingly blue day, not a cloud in the sky,
when suddenly “choices”
ceased to mean “infinite possibilities”
and became instead “deciding what to do without”?
No wonder you’re happiest now
riding on trains from one lover to the next.
In those black, night-mirrored windows
a wild white face, operatic, still enthralls you:
a romantic heroine,
suspended between lives, suspended between destinations.
Katha Pollitt (New York,14 oktober 1949)
De Nederlandse schrijver Daniël Rovers werd geboren in Zelhem op 14 oktober 1975. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voot Daniël Rovers op dit blog.
Uit: Walter
“Sarah kon geen kinderen meer krijgen. Ze had een houten been omdat haar rechter een jaar geleden was afgezet. Het was K., had moeder gezegd. Nu mankte ze iedere ochtend over de klinkers van de Vrachelsestraat naar de kerk. Ze had haar man Sjef op zijn sterfbed beloofd dat ze vijf jaar lang voor de gesloten kerkdeuren zou wachten totdat ze naar binnen kon, om boete voor zijn zonden te doen. De koster had het gezegd met het gezicht van een ongelovige. Voortaan was er één parochiaan die precies wist op welk uur koster Bastiaans de dag aanving.
Er was nog een schim aanwezig, niet ver van hem vandaan, op een van de achterste banken. Walter zag een vurige gloed in het halfduister schijnen. Een rossige kat, de tijgerin Tigra. Slagersvrouw Huijben had geweigerd zich na de geboorte van haar tweede zoon te laten zuiveren bij het doopvont. De weken daarna waren de achterhammen groen uitgeslagen bij slagerij Huijben in de Achterstraat, zo weinig volk kwam er nog over de vloer. Ze werd erop aangekeken, het waren de manieren van een losgeslagen vrouw.
Walter ging de sacristie binnen. Op de gelakte eikenhouten tafel lagen zijn toog en superplie klaar, en daarnaast de amict, de albe, de stool, de manipel en het kazuifel van pastoor Peeters. Aan de rand blonken het koperen wierookscheepje en de belstok, de attributen van de acolieten. Zeger zat op zijn hurken naast de deur, alsof hij heel hard niet aan poepen probeerde te denken. Zeger de neger die de ogen had van een gans.
Walter hoorde hakkengeklak, het naderde over de plavuizen. Dat was pastoor Peeters. De deur ging open, de priester metselde met zijn lijf de opening meteen weer dicht. ‘Goedemorgen jongens.’
‘Goedemorgen meneer pastoor.’
Daniël Rovers (Zelhem, 14 oktober 1975)
De Nieuw-Zeelandse schrijfster Katherine Mansfield werd geboren op 14 oktober 1888 in Wellington. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Katherine Mansfield op dit blog.
Uit: The Journey To Bruges
“You got three-quarters of an hour,” said the porter. “You got an hour mostly. Put it in the cloak-room, lady.”
A German family, their luggage neatly buttoned into what appeared to be odd canvas trouser legs, filled the entire clergyman, his black dicky flapping over his shirt, stood at my elbow. We waited and waited, for the cloakroom porter could not get rid of the German family, who appeared by their enthusiasm and gestures to be explaining to him the virtue of so many buttons.
At last the wife of the party seized her particular packet and started to undo it. Shrugging his shoulders, the porter turned to me. “Where for?” he asked.
“Ostend.”
“Wot are you putting it in here for I said?“ “Because I’ve a long time to wait.”
He shouted, “Train’s in 2.20. No good bringing it here. Hi, you there, lump it off!”
My porter lumped it. The young clergyman, who had listened and remarked, smiled at me radiantly. “The train is in,” he said,“really in. You’ve only a few moments, you know.”
My sensitiveness glimpsed a symbol in his eye. I ran to the book-stall. When I returned I had lost my porter. In the teasing heat I ran up and down the platform. The whole travelling world seemed to posses a porter and glory in him except me. Savage and wretched I saw them watch me with that delighted relish of the hot in the very much hotter. “One could have a fit running in weather like this,” said a stout lady, eating a farewell present of grapes. Then running up and down the Folkstone express. On a higher platform I found my porter sitting on the suit case.”
Katherine Mansfield (14 oktober 1888 – 9 januari 1923)
Cover
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 14e oktober ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2013.