De Vlaamse dichter Jan Lauwereyns werd geboren op 13 mei 1969 in Antwerpen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jan Lauwereyns op dit blog.
De bladzijden open
De bladzijden open
wacht je
op het als een bij zoemend dansen
een mug in de neusvleugel
reeds heb ik bijtspoortjes
op mijn oren
de moederkat schrikt terug
met van die witpluizige
die daar in je homepage
gevangen zitten
ik laat het geschip
doe het antieke kalfsleer toe
verhuis naar de voorleeskamer.
Je doet het of
Je doet het of
je doet het niet
happy time with animal
als je het doet
doe je het
oog op verzadiging
en lekkerness
zo klaar en gretig afgehandeld
logisch
filosofisch
dat de stilstand der dingen
op de heupen werkt
tot ik het daar daarvan
krijg
book off
en rap een beetje.
Jan Lauwereyns (Antwerpen, 13 mei 1969)
De Vlaamse dichter Reinout Verbeke werd geboren op 13 mei 1981 in Roeselare. Zie ook alle tags voor Reinout Verbeke op dit blog.
Vader in vader
De bloedappelsienen die je me gaf
ik at ze tot mijn mond ervan scheurde
Met elke nieuwe appelsien barst je verder
uit me tevoorschijn
Je hebt mijn cellen doorboord
met het startschot vader, het regenjack
dat ik afdraag, de sterfelijkheid die ik doorgeef
In de pas van de kompasnaald vader
stappen we het te smalle
landschap
af
Zo gaat het goed zo gaat het beter
zing ik met de tanden steeds strakker
opeen
Uit een achtste appelsien,
afgevreten tot het wit, sneed ik
een lach. Ik hou hem al uren in
Vader naar vader
Je hebt al mijn taal verteerd
alleen dat ene riviertje laten we
onuitgesproken tussen ons slingeren
om aan de oever ervan te keilen
in afwachting van de ander. Ik zie je soms verderop
in gedachten staan, vader, curator
van mijn herinneringen. Je zwijgt terwijl ik
steeds meer vader word van jouw leven
Ik gooi bloedappelsienen in achtsten
in het water, kleine kajaks stroomafwaarts
Als ik straks schillen vind
vind ik liefde
Reinout Verbeke (Roeselare, 13 mei 1981)
De Engelse schrijver Bruce Chatwin werd op 13 mei 1940 in Sheffield geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Bruce Chatwin op dit blog.
Uit: The Songlines
“Neither of Arkady’s parents had ever read a book in English.
He delighted them by winning a first-class honours degree, in history and philosophy, at Adelaide University. He made them sad when he went to work as a school-teacher,on an Aboriginal settlement in Walbiri country to the north of Alice Springs.
He liked the Aboriginals. He liked their grit and tenacity, and their artful ways of dealing with the white man. He had learnt, or half-learnt, a couple of their languages and had come away astonished by their intellectual vigour, their feats of memory and their capacity and will to survive. They were not, he insisted, a dying race — although they did need help, now and then, to get the government and mining companies off their backs.
It was during his time as a school-teacherthat Arkady learned of the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as ‘Dreaming-tracks’ or ‘Songlines’; to the Aboriginals as the ‘Footprints of the Ancestors’ or the ‘Way of the Law’.
Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes – and so singing the world into existence.
Arkady was so struck by the beauty of this concept that he began to take notes of everything he saw or heard, not for publication, but to satisfy his own curiosity. At first, the Walbiri Elders mistrusted him, and their answers to his questions were evasive. With time, once he had won thei confidence, they invited hi to witness their most secret ceremonies and encouraged him to learn their songs.”
Bruce Chatwin (13 mei 1940 – 18 januari 1989)
De Britse schrijfster Daphne du Maurier werd geboren in Londen op 13 mei 1907. Zie ook alle tags voor Daphne du Maurier op dit blog.
Uit: The Doll
“Intense, restrained, and soulless; for you must be soulless to have done what you have done. You have that fatal quality of silence – of a tight repression that suggests a hidden fire – yes, a burning fire unquenchable. What have I not done with you in dreams, Rebecca?
You would be fatal to any man. A spark that lights, and does not burn itself, a flame fanning other flames.
What did I love in you but your indifference, and the suggestions that lay beneath your indifference?
I loved you too much, wanted you too much, had for you too great a tenderness. Now all of this is like a twisted root in my heart, a deadly poison in my brain. You have made of me a madman. You fill me with a kind of horror, a devastating hate that is akin to love – a hunger that is nausea. If only I could be calm and clear for one moment – one moment only . . .
I want to make a plan – an orderly arrangement of dates.
It was at Olga’s studio first, I think. I can remember how it rained outside, and the rain made dirty streaks on the window-pane. The room was full, a lot of people were talking by the piano – Vorki was there, they were trying to make him sing, and Olga was screaming with laughter.
I always hated the hard thin reed of her laugh. You were sitting – Rebecca was sitting on a stool by the fire.
Her legs were twisted under her, and she looked like an elf, a sort of boy.
Her back was turned to me, and she wore a funny little fur cap on her head. I remember being amused at her position, I wanted to see her face. I called out to Olga to introduce me.”
Daphne du Maurier (13 mei 1907 – 19 april 1989)
De Schotse dichteres Kathleen Jamie werd geboren op 13 mei 1962 in Currie, Edinburgh. Zie ook alle tags voor Kathleen Jamie op dit blog.
The Hinds
Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t we
the bonniest companie?
Come to me,
you’ll be happy, but never go home.
Autumn
O whence the leaves
scuttering down Easter Road,
sycamore and rowan
desperate as refugees,
crowding against the wheels of street-side dumpsters
– common leaves
with two-three crisp packets, like gaudy imposters
fleeing by outside the corner-shop
convenient for milk and pornography…
see the leaves hurry, Shy but Dirty –
past the Chinese nail-bar,
Mr Greg’s Tatoos –
they’re here, look:
blown into your stair
with the pizza delivery leaflets…
O whither the leaves
Kathleen Jamie (Currie, 13 mei 1962)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Armistead Jones Maupin Jr. werd geboren op 13 mei 1944 in Washington. Zie ook alle tags voor Armistead Maupin op dit blog.
Uit: Mary Ann in Autumn
“There should be a rabbit hole was what she was thinking.
There should be something about this hillside, some lingering sense memory-the view of Alcatraz, say, or the foghorns or the mossy smell of the planks beneath her feet-that would lead her back to her lost wonderland. Everything around her was familiar but somehow foreign to her own experience, like a place she had seen in a movie but had never actually visited. She had climbed these weathered steps-what?-thousands of times before, but there wasn’t a hint of homecoming, nothing to take her back to where she used to be.
The past doesn’t catch up with us, she thought. It escapes fiom us.
At the landing she stopped to catch her breath. Beneath her, the street intersectng with Barbary Lane tilted dizzily toward the bay, a collision of perspectives, like one of those wonky Escher prints that were everywhere in the seventies. The bay was bright blue today, the hard flerce blue of a gas flame. If there was fog rolling in-and there must be, given the insistence of those horns-she couldn’t see it from here.
When she reached the path at the top of the steps, one of her heels got stuck in the paving stones. Yanking it free with a grunt, she chided herself for not leaving her Ferragamos back at the Four Seasons. Those stones, if memory served, had been used as ballast on the sailing ships that came around the horn-or so her landlady Mrs. Madrigal had claimed, once upon a time. Twenty years later the chunky granite blocks looked suspiciously ordinary, like the pavers in her driveway back in Connecticut.”
Armistead Maupin ( Washington, 13 mei 1944)
De Franse dichter en schrijver Alphonse Daudet werd geboren in Nîmes op 13 mei 1840. Zie ook alle tags voor Alphonse Daudet op dit blog.
Les Cerisiers
I
Vous souvient-il un peu de ce que vous disiez,
Mignonne, au temps des cerisiers ?
Ce qui tombait du bout de votre lèvre rose,
Ce que vous chantiez, ô mon doux bengali,
Vous l’avez oublié, c’était si peu de chose,
Et pourtant, c’était bien joli…
Mais moi je me souviens (et n’en soyez pas surprise),
Je me souviens pour vous de ce que vous disiez.
Vous disiez (à quoi bon rougir ?)…donc vous disiez…
Que vous aimiez fort la cerise,
La cerise et les cerisiers.
II
Vous souvient-il un peu de ce que vous faisiez,
Mignonne, au temps des cerisiers ?
Plus grands sont les amours, plus courte est la mémoire
Vous l’avez oublié, nous en sommes tous là ;
Le cœur le plus aimant n’est qu’une vaste armoire.
On fait deux tours, et puis voilà.
Mais moi je me souviens (et n’en soyez surprise),
Je me souviens pour vous de ce que vous faisiez…
Vous faisiez (à quoi bon rougir ?)…donc vous faisiez…
Des boucles d’oreille en cerise,
En cerise de cerisiers
Alphonse Daudet (13 mei 1840 – 17 december 1897)
De Japanse schrijver Koji Suzuki werd geboren op 13 mei 1957 in Hamamatsu.Zie ook alle tags voor Kōji Suzuki op dit blog.
Uit: Ring (Vertaald door Robert B. Rohmer en Glynne Walley)
“A beam of fluorescent light fell from an open window on the second floor of the house onto the dark surface of the street below. The light, the only one in the house, came from the room of Tomoko Oishi. Dressed in shorts and a white T-shirt, she was slouched in a chair reading a book for school; her body was twisted into an impossible position, legs stretched out toward an electric fan on the floor. Fanning herself with the hem of her T-shirt to allow the breeze to hit her bare flesh, she muttered about the heat to no one in particular. A senior at a private girls’ high school, she had let her homework pile up over the summer vacation; she had played too much, and she blamed it an the heat. The summer, however, hadn’t really been all that hot. There hadn’t been many clear days, and she hadn’t been able to spend nearly as much time at the beach as she did most summers. And what’s more, as soon as vacation was over, there were five straight days of perfect summer weather. It irritated Tomoko: she resented the clear sky.
How was she supposed to study in this stupid heat?
With the hand she had been running through her hair Tomoko reached over to turn up the volume of the radio. She saw a moth alight on the window screen beside her, then fly away somewhere, blown by the wind from the fan. The screen trembled slightly for a moment after the bug had vanished into the darkness.
She had a test tomorrow, but she was getting nowhere. Tomoko Oishi wasn’t going to be ready for it even if she pulled an all-nighter.”
Kōji Suzuki (Hamamatsu, 13 mei 1957)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 13 mei ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.