De Amerikaanse schrijver Robert Coover werd geboren op 4 februari 1932 in Charles City, Iowa. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Coover op dit blog.
Uit: White-Bread Jesus
“Wesley was always a dutiful son and responsible student, and he has tried, all his life long and even now while suffering so, to be a dutiful and responsible pastor and citizen, which is to say a typical West Condon hypocrite, and though the rain-soaked Sunrise Service atop a strip-mine hump didn’t go well (all right, so he forgot to put on one of his shoes, what was so important about that?), he got himself dried off and properly dressed and dug up one of his old Easter sermons and was prepared to fulfill his parishioners’ expectations of him for one more day.
And the service began calmly enough. In spite of the storm, there was a large wet but festive crowd, a chirrupy twitter of Easter greetings, colorful floral displays banking the brick walls. Priscilla Tindle, accompanied by muffled thunder and the drum of rain on the tiled roof, did something peppily Risen-Sonish on the organ to get things started, there was the usual unsingable hymn (“The Strife is O’er . . .”), followed by the doxology and prayer of confession muttered in unison, a cantata (“Was It a Morning Like This?”), and then the weekly welcome and church tidings. This was normally his task (and what tidings he had!), but Cavanaugh took it over, canceling the rest of Easter. No problem with that. In fact, a great relief. Just a sham, he would never have got through it all, the maddening detail of his ministry — all the weddings and baptisms and funerals and christenings, the bake sales and potluck suppers, sickroom visits, board meetings, Girl Scouts, quilters, the obligatory golf foursomes and service clubs, spiritual counseling, breakfast clubs and Bible study, not to mention just keeping the church clean and the pianos tuned and the lights and toilets working — contributing intimately to his crisis. But then the banker’s wiseacre brat read the Easter scripture lesson and reached the part where John says, “In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you,” and he couldn’t hold back: “You don’t know the half of it!” he cried, and launched into his Job-inspired diatribe in the name of the opening prayer (“I will not restrain my mouth! I will speak in the anguish of my spirit! I will complain in the bitterness of my soul!”) and got sat down.
While Cavanaugh carries on with his family-values malarkey, thanking his son for the scripture reading and speaking of the church as one big family — there is a suffocating stench worse than the old family farm in the haying season of wet clothing, damp bodies, thick perfume, musty songbooks, and dead flowers that seems to be rising from the speech itself — Wesley glances over at Prissy sitting at her keyboard and sees that she is staring at him, clearly in shocked pain, but as if trying to console him with her sorrowful but adoring gaze. Jesus asks who she is. Priscilla Tindle. Wife of the choir director. Used to be a dancer.”
De Moldavische dichter en schrijver Grigore Vieru werd geboren in Pereita op 4 februari 1935. Zie ook alle tags voor Grigore Vieru op dit blog.
Transplantatie
Ik moest
In mijn borst plaatsen
Een ander hart.
Anders,
Zou ik omkomen.
Ze gaf mij haar hart
Moeder.
Maar alles
Doet nog steeds pijn.
Vooral als de aarde brandt
Dorstig naar regen.
Vooral als hij niet terugkomt
Papa uit de oorlogen.
Vooral als ik onder vreemden ben
En al maanden niet naar huis schrijf.
Vooral in de schemering, als de zon
Achter de heuvels verdwijnt,
Het doet zeer.
Zoveel pijn
Heb ik nog nooit gehad.
Maar ook nooit zoveel
Geduld.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 4e februari ook mijn blog van 4 februari 2019 en eveneens mijn blog van 4 februari 2018 deel 1 en ook deel 2.