De Amerikaanse dichter en vertaler John M. Ridland werd geboren in Londen op 4 juli 1933 en groeide op in Californië. Hij behaalde zijn PhD aan Claremont Graduate School en heeft talloze boeken en chapbooks gepubliceerd, waaronder “Odes on Violence” (1969), “In the Shadowless Light” (1978), “Palms: Six ballads” (1993), “Poems of the American West” (2002), “A Brahms Card Ballad” (2007), “Happy in an Ordinary Thing” (2013), en “A. Lincolniad: An epic poem honoring the memory of President Abraham Lincoln”(2014). Met zijn vrouw Muriel schreef hij “And Say What He Is: The Life of a Special Child Together”(1975). Ridland is ook vertaler en heeft vertalingen van Sir Gawain en de Groene Ridder gepubliceerd, evenals vele werken van de Hongaarse dichters Sándor Márai en Miklós Radnóti. Ridland publiceerde een versvertaling van het Hongaarse volks-epos “János Vitéz” (1999). In 2010 werd Ridland onderscheiden met de Balint Balassi Memorial Sword Award voor zijn vertalingen van Hongaarse literatuur. Ridland ontving ook een gouden medaille van de Arpad Society uit Cleveland, Ohio. Hij gaf meer dan veertig jaar les aan de Universiteit van Californië-Santa Barbara en is momenteel professor emeritus van dat college.
Moving In: Saturday Morning
Young couple lugging your box spring up ten steep steps to a rental,
too tired and sweaty to lie on it now, or to make the day sentimental,
you are us newly married over half a century back,
boxing, lifting, U-Hauling all we owned down the dotted track
to the farthest edge of our newly discovered and little-known universe.
With our mattress we carried many kind blessings and one blind, fatal curse.
Of the pair, you two should repeat and repeat the former, ad lib,
while the latter we pray you’ll be ignorant of—the empty, unportable crib.
You’re young: soon enough you’ll recover from today’s heaty lifting and moving,
and lie down on that bed for what beds are meant for—sleeping and loving.
Madrigals for Muriel
1.
Valentine’s Day rain, heavy at times.
The flowers drip, caught out in it,
until they droop. The house is dumb
without you in it. So am I.
not out in rain but caught at home.
The sky—what sky? there is no sky,
nothing but rain, heavy at times,
as I am until you come home
with bread and fruit and cheese and wine.
Till you come home, the rain goes on,
heavy at times.
2.
In the movie of our life
the leading man and his wife
are looking older—the make-up
artists, too quick on the take-up,
have done their job indel-
ibly, credibly well:
the creases don’t iron out
except, a little, at night,
and those afternoons each week
when the old commotion rakes
then smoothes them smooth as the sheet
that rumples underneath.
