De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.
To a downfallen rose
When I laid aside the verses of Mimnermus,
I lived a life of canned heat and raw hands,
alone, not far from my body did I wander,
walked with a hope of a sudden dreamy forest of gold.
O rose, downfallen, bend your huge vegetic back;
eye down the imposter sun…in winter dream
sulk your rosefamed head into the bile of golden giant,
ah, rose, augment the rose further still!
whence upon that self-created dive in Eden
you blossomed where the Watchmaker of Nothingness
lulled,
your birth did cause bits of smashed night to pop,
causing my dreamy forest to unfold.
Yes, and the Watchmaker, his wheely-flesh
and jewelled-bones spoiled as he awoke,
and in the face of your Somethingness, he fled
waving oblivious monks in his unwinded hands.
The sun cannot see upheaved spatics, the tennis of Venus
and the court of Mars sing the big lie of the sun,
ah, faraway ball of fur, sponge up the elements;
make clear the trees and the mountains of the earth,
arise and turn away from the vast fixedness.
Rose! Rose! my tinhorneared rose!
Rose is my visionic eyehand of all Mysticdom
Rose is my wise chair of bombed houses
Rose is my patient electric eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes,
Rose is my festive jowl,
Dali Lama Grand Vicar Glorious Caesar rose!
When I hear the rose scream
I gather all the failure experiments of an anatomical empire
and, with some chemical dream, discover
the hateful law of the earth and sun, and the screaming
rose between.
De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.
Uit: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“MARGARET: Why, you know what they’re up to!
BRICK [appearing]: No, I don’t know what they’re up to.
[He stands there in the bathroom doorway drying his hair with a towel and hanging onto the towel rack because one ankle is broken, plastered and bound. He is still slim and firm as a boy. His liquor hasn’t started tearing him down outside. He has the additional charm of that cool air of detachment that people have who have given up the struggle. But now and then, when disturbed, something flashes behind it, like lightning in a fair sky, which shows that at some deeper level he is far from peaceful. Perhaps in a stronger light he would show some signs of deliquescence, but the fading, still warm, light from the gallery treats him gently.]
MARGARET: I’ll tell you what they’re up to, boy of mine!-They’re up to cutting you out of your father’s estate, and-
[She freezes momentarily before her next remark. Her voice drops as if it were somehow a personally embarassing admission.]
-Now we know that Big Daddy’s dyin’ of-cancer….
[There are voices on the lawn below: long-drawn calls across distance. Margaret raises her lovely bare arms and powders her armpits with a light sigh.
[She adjusts the angle of a magnifying mirror to straighten an eyelash, then rises fretfully saying:]
There’s so much light in the room it-
BRICK [softly but sharply]: Do we?
MARGARET: Do we what?
BRICK: Know Big Daddy’s dyin’ of cancer?
MARGARET: Got the report today.
BRICK: Oh …
MARGARET [letting down bamboo blinds which cast long, gold-fretted shadows over the room]:
Yep, got th’ report just now … it didn’t surprise me, Baby…. “
De Zuid-Koreaanse dichter en schrijver Hwang Sun-won werd geboren op 26 maart 1915 in Taedong, Zuid-Pyongan, in het hedendaagse Noord-Korea. Zie ook alle tags voor Hwang Sun-won op dit blog.
Uit: A Shower (Vertaald door broeder Anthony van Taizé)
„As soon as the boy saw the girl beside the stream, he realized that she must be the great-granddaughter of MasterYun. She had her hands in the water and was splashing it about. Probably she had never seen a stream like that in Seoul.
She had been playing with the water in the same manner for several days now, on the way home from school. Until the previous day she had played at the edge of the stream, but today she is right in the middle of the stepping-stones.
The boy sat down on the bank. He decided to wait until she got out of the way.
As it happened, someone came along and she made way.
The next day, he arrived at the stream a little later. This time he found her washing her face, sitting there in the middle of the stepping-stones. In contrast to her pink jumper with its sleeves rolled up, the nape of her neck was very white.
After washing her face for a while, she stares intently into the water. She must be looking at her reflection. She makes a sudden grab at the water. Perhaps some baby fish were swimming by.
There is no knowing if the girl is aware or not of the boy sitting on the bank as she goes on making nimble grabs at the water. But each time to no effect. She simply keeps grabbing at the water as if for the sheer fun of it. It looks as though she will only get out of the way if there’s someone crossing the stream, as on the previous day.
Then she plucks something from the water. It was a white pebble. After that, she stands up and goes skipping lightly across the stepping-stones.
Once across, she turns round : ” Hey, you.”
De Engels-Ierse schrijver en regisseur Martin McDonagh werd geboren op 26 maart 1970 in Camberwell, Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin McDonagh op dit blog.
Uit: The Lieutenant of Inishmore
“Scene One
A cottage on Inishmore1 circa 1993. Front door in centre of back wall, a window to its left and right. Exit stage left to a bathroom, unseen, an open area forward right to signify another room. A clock somewhere on back wall along with a framed piece of embroidery reading ‘Home Sweet Home’. Cupboards left and right, a telephone on one of them. A couple of armchairs near the back wall and a table centre, on which, as the play begins, lies a dead black cat, its head half missing. Donny, the middle-aged owner of the house, and Davey, a long-haired, slightly pudgy neighbour of seventeen, stand staring quietly at this cat for a few moments.
Davey Do you think he’s dead, Donny?
Pause. Donny picks up the limp dead cat. Bits of its brain plop out. Donny looks across at Davey and puts the cat back down again.
Donny Aye.
Davey He might be in a coma. Would we ring the vet?
Donny It’s more than a vet this poor feck needs.
Davey If he gave him an injection?
Donny (pause) Have this injection, you!
Donny steps back and kicks Davey up the arse.
Davey(almost crying) What was that fer?!
Donny How many times have people told you, hairing down that bastarding hill on that bastarding bicycle?
Davey I didn’t touch the poor fella, I swear it! In the road I saw him lying . . . !
Donny In the road me arsehole!”
De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Lee Frost werd geboren op 26 maart 1874 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Frost op dit blog.
An Old Man’s Winter Night
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
Robert Frost (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963)
De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Erica Jong werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1942. Zie ook alle tags voor Erica Jong op dit blog.
I Sleep With
I sleep with double pillows since you’re gone.
Is one of them for you-or is it you?
My bed is heaped with books of poetry.
I fall asleep on yellow legal pads.
Oh the orgies in stationery stores!
The love of printer’s ink & think new pads!
A poet has to fall in love to write.
Her bed is heaped with papers, or with men.
I keep your pillow pressed down with my books.
They leave an indentation like your head.
If I can’t have you here, I’ll take cold type-
& words: the warmest things there are-
but you.
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn twee blogs van 26 maart 2012.