De Schotse dichter en vertaler Edwin Morgan werd geboren in Glasgow op 27 april 1920. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2010. Edwin Morgan overleed op 19 augustus van het afgelopen jaar op 90-jarige leeftijd..
The Demon Sings
O to be an angel
Do whatever you’re told
Preen each other’s wingtips
Grin your set of gold
I’d rather be a demon
Ploughing through the glaur
Whistling to my fellows
What against is for
Against is not for nothing
Against is drive a nail
Against is draw a crown down
Fill a quaich with hail
So hail to all high water
The maelstrom and the pit
You’ll never hear a harpstring
If we can smuggle it
Away from the high heavens
And tease it out to bind
Every gasping evangelist
Right out of his mind
For we are merry dancers
Through curtains of the dark
Feel us hear us fear us
When the dark begins to spark!
The Macaw
A singing macaw called Novello
Kept calling his blue feathers yellow.
‘No, I’m not colour-blind,
For it’s all in the mind,
Like the deep green voice of my cello.’
Edwin Morgan (27 april 1920 –19 augustus 2010)
De Brits-Ierse dichter Cecil Day Lewis werd geboren in Ballintogher, Ierland, op 27 april 1904. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2010.
At Lemmons
Above my table three magnolia flowers
Utter their silent requiems.
Through the window I see your elms
In labour with the racking storm
Giving it shape in April’s shifty airs.
Up there sky boils from a brew of cloud
To blue gleam, sunblast, then darkens again.
No respite is allowed
The watching eye, the natural agony.
Below is the calm a loved house breeds
Where four have come together to dwell
– Two write, one paints, the fourth invents –
Each pursuing a natural bent
But less through nature’s formative travail
Than each in his own humour finding the self he needs.
Round me all is amenity, a bloom of
Magnolia uttering its requiems,
A climate of acceptance. Very well
I accept my weakness with my friends’
Good natures sweetening each day my sick room.
The Ecstatic
Lark, skylark, spilling your rubbed and round
Pebbles of sounds in air’s still lake,
Whose widening circles fill the noon; yet none
Is known so small beside the sun:
Be strong your fervent soaring, your skyward air!
Tremble there, a nerve of song!
Float up there where voice and wing are one,
A singing star, a note of light!
Buoyed, embayed in heaven’s noon-wide]reaches-
For soon Light’s tide will turn – Oh Stay!
Cease not till day streams to the west, then down
That estuary drop down to peace.
Cecil Day Lewis (27 april 1904 – 22 mei 1972)
Foto van Irving Penn voor Vogue in 1951
De Amerikaanse toneelschrijver August Wilson (eig. Frederick August Kittel) werd geboren op 27 april 1945 in Pittsbugh. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2010.
Uit: Fences (Introduction)
„Near the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an
honest and solid dream. The city devoured them. They swelled its belly until it burst into a thousand
furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops and bakers’ ovens, a thousand churches and hospitals and funeral parlors and moneylenders. The city grew. It nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited only by his talent, his guile, and his willingness and capacity for hard work. For the immigrants of Europe, a dream dared and won true.
The descendants of African slaves were offered no such welcome or participation. They came from
places called the Carolinas and the Virginias, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. They came strong, eager, searching. The city rejected them, and they fled and settled along the riverbanks and under bridges in shallow, ramshackle houses made of sticks and tar-paper. They collected rags and wood. They sold the use of their muscles and their bodies. They cleaned houses and washed clothes, they shined shoes, and in quiet desperation and vengeful pride, they stole and lived in
pursuit of their own dream: That they could breathe free, finally, and stand to meet life with the force of dignity and whatever eloquence the heart could call upon.
By 1957, the hard-won victories of the European immigrants had solidified the industrial might of America. War had been confronted and won with new energies that used loyalty and patriotism as its fuel. Life was rich, full, and flourishing. The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, and the hot winds of change that would make the sixties a turbulent, racing, dangerous, and provocative
decade had not yet begun to blow full.“
August Wilson (27 april 1945 – 2 oktober 2005)
De Turkse prediker, schrijver en dichter Fethullah Gülen werd geboren in Korucuk, Erzurum, op 27 april 1941. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2010.
Music of Rain
Drops of rain, as if smiles from the worlds beyond,
Travel here and there seeking the seas they parted from.
They fall with the sound of plucked lute-strings:
And hearing it, the earth begins to breathe.
Drops of rain float down with the grace of butterflies,
As if arranging some meaning in most rhythmic verse.
They resonate in the ear like a sweet melody,
And skies seem to weep for the grass on earth.
Each drop has said farewell to its heavenly life,
And returns to its origin, which is a roaring ocean.
Everything on earth holds still to listen to rain;
Each drop descends to the ground like an angel.
Eyes seeing the rain fall in such thrilling harmony
See worlds beyond this world come into view.
The skies rejoice with smiles observed everywhere;
Everyone is enchanted by the heavenly rhapsody.
Vapor rises in masses as great as mountains,
Then it seeks the green, blue and orange on earth.
Rain always brings down a peculiar contentment,
And carries fragrance of Paradise and exhilaration.
That fragrance pervades everywhere, deep into the soul,
Earth awakens to life and flowers burst open.
The whole of creation finds peace and serenity,
The window open to the realms beyond becomes visible.
Fethullah Gülen (Korucuk, 27 april 1941)
De Poolse schrijver Martin Gray werd geboren als Mietek Grayewski in Warschauop 27 april 1922. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 april 2010.
Uit: Le Livre De La Vie
„Il y a toujours plusieurs chemins pour le fleuve qui va vers la mer. Mais il faut que le fleuve aille vers la mer et ne se perde pas dans les sables. Il faut qu’un couple soit ouvert aux autres sinon il se perd. Il faut qu’un couple crée : des enfants ou des oeuvres ou le bonheur pour les autres. Il faut qu’un couple donne son amour. Car l’amour qui s’enferme se dessèche et meurt, comme une plante sans lumière. Les enfants, les oeuvres, les autres, le monde : voilà le soleil et l’eau qui font vivre l’amour.
(…)
Le passé d’un homme peut être semblable à l’herbe folle dans un champ ou à la plante grimpante sur un mur. Il peut étouffer les jeunes pousses, il peut desceller les pierres les plus lourdes. Le passé peut être un mal pour l’homme. L’homme ne peut nier ou effacer le passé. Il le porte toujours en lui, gravé. C’est son histoire personnelle, unique. Mais il doit s’y adosser. Prendre appui sur cette expérience pour s’en éloigner sans trahir et sans oublier. Parce que la vie c’est la marche vers l’avenir. Et il faut faire confiance à ce qui viendra.“
Martin Gray (Warschau, 27 april 1922)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e april ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.