De Estische dichter, schrijver en vertaler Tõnu Õnnepalu werd geboren op 13 september 1962 in Tallin. Zie ook alle tags voor Tõnu Õnnepalu op dit blog.
UIt: Acre (Vertaald door Adam Cullen)
“I realized I was very far from home on the very first morning there, in a suburb of Toronto, when I woke up (which had happened several times already because my internal clock read midday) and heard the birds singing outside. Why they should sing in August, I didn’t know, but they were. The birdsong was familiar and yet, it was entirely foreign. As if familiar birds weren’t singing right. As if they’d suffered some kind of a stroke and had forgotten how to sing. Or had studied under the wrong masters. Or had studied under some kind of bizarre masters—the type who want to do everything differently, to pursue something new. Modernists of some sort. For the birds were singing backwards—that was the first word that came to mind when I heard them. I’ve grown a little used to it by now. It no longer shocks me, and neither do they really sing much anymore. Now, it’s mainly the chittering of red squirrels coming from the forest. At first, I couldn’t even figure out whether it was a bird or a beast making the noise. These American red squirrels are chipper little animals. The first time I saw them scurrying after one another, I thought they were babies. Mini-squirrels. Then, there are the darling tiny chipmunks that are like stuffed animals forgotten in the woods and come to life. Riina mentioned that she’s spotted a flying squirrel a few times here, too (which the expatriate Estonians curiously call lendavad oravad instead of simply lendoravad), and even fed it from the palm of her hand. Riina spent her childhood summers here by the lakes but now lives far away in Tallinn. Tallinn lies at an immeasurable distance from this place, at any rate. In another world.
The one bird in Canada’s forests (leaving waterbirds aside) that is the same from here to Iceland—and even to England, Hiiumaa, Moscow, and Irkutsk—is the raven. A pan-boreal species. Its cries echo across the belt of northern forests and tundra circling the entire globe. To the Indians, at least to a few (those in the forest, of course), it was a mythical bird, creator of the world.
Yet on the whole, America is wrong. You feel it here with every step and all the time. I’m amazed that visitors to America never mention it. They talk as if what’s here is almost something ordinary, even something European. But it’s not. Not in the very least. Of course, you do encounter European-style people who speak nearly the same language, and the British Queen is the country’s formal ruler. The Bible is read in churches and Shakespeare is played in theaters. But it’s all false. Just as false and misplaced as expatriate Estonian folk dance and the way they recite the poems of Juhan Liiv. Sincere, absolutely sincere, sincere and cute, but inevitably false. Out of place. America as a whole is set in the wrong place.”
De Amerikaanse dichter William Carlos Williams werd geboren in Rutherford (New Jersey) op 17 september 1883. Zie ook alle tags voor William Carlos Williams op dit blog.
De laatste woorden van mijn engelse grootmoeder
1920
Naast haar op een tafeltje
vlak bij het gore, slonzige bed
stonden wat vuile borden
en een glas melk –
Rimpelig en bijna blind
lag ze te snurken
wakkerschrikkend om op
boze toon eten te eisen,
Geeme iets te eten –
Ze laten me verhongeren –
Ik voel me best ik ga niet
naar het ziekenhuis. Nee, nee, nee
Geef me iets te eten
Laat mij je naar het ziekenhuis
brengen, zei ik,
en wanneer je weer goed bent
kun je doen wat je wilt.
Ze glimlachte, Ja
eerst doe jij wat jij wilt en
dan kan ik doen wat ik wil –
Oh, oh, oh! riep ze
toen de broeders haar
op de draagbaar tilden –
Noemen jullie dit
‘t iemand naar de zin maken?
Haar geest was helder nu –
O jullie denken slim te zijn
jullie jongelui,
zei ze, maar ik zeg jullie
jullie weten niets.
Toen vertrokken we.
Onderweg
passeerden we een lange rij
iepen. Ze keek er een tijdje naar
door het raam van de
ziekenwagen en zei,
Wat zijn al die
wazige dingen daarginds?
Bomen? Nou, ik hoef ze
niet meer en draaide haar hoofd opzij.
Vertaald door J. Bernlef
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 13e september ook mijn blog van 13 september 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 13 september 2018 en ook mijn blog van 13 september 2015 deel 1 en ook deel 2.