De Amerikaanse schrijver Richard Powers werd geboren op 18 juni 1957 in Evanston, Illinois. Zie ook alle tags voor Richard Powers op dit blog.
Uit: The Echo Maker
“They converge on the river at winter’s end as they have for eons, carpeting the wetlands. In this light, something saurian still clings to them: the oldest flying things on earth, one stutter-step away from pterodactyls. As darkness falls for real, it’s a beginner’s world again, the same evening as that day sixty million years ago when this migration began.
Half a million birds—four-fifths of all the sandhill cranes on earth—home in on this river. They trace the Central Flyway, an hourglass laid over the continent. They push up from New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, hundreds of miles each day, with thousands more ahead before they reach their remembered nests. For a few weeks, this stretch of river shelters the miles-long flock. Then, by the start of spring, they’ll rise and head away, feeling their way up to Sas-katchewan, Alaska, or beyond.
This year’s flight has always been. Something in the birds retraces a route laid down centuries before their parents showed it to them. And each crane recalls the route still to come.
Tonight’s cranes mill again on the braided water. For another hour, their massed calls carry on the emptying air. The birds flap and fidget, edgy with migration. Some tear up frosty twigs and toss them in the air. Their jitters spill over into combat. At last the sandhills settle down into wary, stilt-legged sleep, most standing in the water, a few farther up in the stubbled fields.
A squeal of brakes, the crunch of metal on asphalt, one broken scream and then another rouse the flock. The truck arcs through the air, corkscrewing into the field. A plume shoots through the birds. They lurch off the ground, wings beating. The panicked carpet lifts, circles, and falls again. Calls that seem to come from creatures twice their size carry miles before fading.”
De Franse schrijver Raymond Radiguet werd geboren op 18 juni 1903 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. Zie ook alle tags voor Raymond Radiguet op dit blog.
Uit: The Devil in the Flesh (Vertaald door Christopher Moncrieff)
“We would read together by the light of the fire, into which she often threw the letters that her husband sent her every day from the Front. Judging by their frequent expressions of anxiety I guessed that Marthe’s letters to him were becoming less and less tender and less and less frequent. It was not without a certain disquiet that I watched those letters burn. For a second the fire became much brighter; the truth was I was afraid to see more clearly.
Marthe would often ask me if it was really true that I had loved her ever since our first meeting, and reproached me for not telling her before she was married. Had I done so, she said, she would never have married Jacques. For although at first she had felt a sort of love for him, it had diminished as the period of their engagement became longer and longer on account of the war. By the time she married Jacques she no longer loved him at all. She had hoped that her feelings would change during the fortnight’s leave Jacques had been given
He was clumsy. The one who loves always annoys the one who does not. And Jacques loved her more than ever. His letters showed that he was unhappy, but that he held his Marthe too highly in his esteem to believe that she would be capable of infidelity. He blamed only himself, begging her to tell him what he had done to offend her; ‘I feel so coarse when I am with you. I feel everything I say hurts you.’ Marthe replied simply that this was not so and that she had nothing to reproach him with.”
Portret door Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1923
De Engelse dichter Geoffrey Hill werd geboren op 18 juni 1932 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. Zie ook alle tags voor Geoffrey Hill op dit blog.
An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England
the spiritual, Platonic old England …
S. T. COLERIDGE, Anima Poetae
‘Your situation’, said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley, ‘is absolutely poetic.’
‘I try sometimes to fancy’, said Mr Millbank, with a rather fierce smile, ‘that I am in the New World.’
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby
1 QUAINT MAZES
And, after all, it is to them we return.
Their triumph is to rise and be our hosts:
lords of unquiet or of quiet sojourn,
those muddy-hued and midge-tormented ghosts.
On blustery lilac-bush and terrace-urn
bedaubed with bloom Linnaean pentecosts
put their pronged light; the chilly fountains burn.
Religion of the heart, with trysts and quests
and pangs of consolation, its hawk’s hood
twitched off for sweet carnality, again
rejoices in old hymns of servitude,
haunting the sacred well, the hidden shrine.
It is the ravage of the heron wood;
it is the rood blazing upon the green.
De Nederlandse schrijver en dichter Bert Schierbeek werd geboren op 18 juni 1918 in Glanerbrug in Twente. Zie ook alle tags voor Bert Schierbeek op dit blog.
maar we zouden niet vergeten dat
maar we zouden niet vergeten dat
we hebben gelachen, gelachen hebben
we veel en dat zal ik niet vergeten
want we hebben gelachen en veel hè?
en dat zullen we nooit vergeten om-
dat we zoveel gelachen hebben en dat
niet vergeten gvd wat hebben we gelachen
en niet en nooit vergeten dat we zo
hebben gelachen omdat we samen waren
en zoveel gelachen hebben dat we
het nooit zullen vergeten
Het lied der veranderingen
Kun je me nu zien
(ik droom)
de wind waait
(verdomd hard)
en ik denk
je komt terug
(op zoveel wind)
de luiken klapperen
(je komt terug)
denk ik
kun je me nu zien?
(you know: I am with you now)
ik
ik zag me
ik zag mezelf
(zie je me nu?)
you feel it
over there
I love you
De Duitse dichteres Karin Fellner werd geboren 1970 in München, waar zij nog steeds woont. Zie ook alle tags voor Karin Fellner op dit blog..
diese kleine frau sitzt im laub
diese kleine frau sitzt im laub
ihres denkens und schaukelt
ohne betreff ist sie nur
lindenbollen ein baum
schwammerl außer dienst
sieht mit geschlossenem lid:
mein und dein ist ein schild
aus federn es verbläst
die körnung in der brust
die steinrüstung bestreicht
sie mit luftfäden jetzt
ist nichts mehr: besonders
platane an schnellstraße an
der scheibe verwischte fliege
zerfasert wie distelköpfe
ihr knistern: neuronal
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 18e juni ook mijn blog van 18 juni 2012 en eveneens mijn blog van 18 juni 2011 deel 2.