Willem de Mérode, James Fenton, Walter de la Mare, Ted Kooser, Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr., Richard Anders

Aan alle bezoekers en mede-bloggers een Vrolijk Pasen! 

 

 

Jezus verschijnt aan Maria Magdalena, Aleksandr Ivanov (16 juli 1806 – 3 juli 1858)

 

 

 

Paasmorgen

Hij was het graf al uitgegaan
Vóór ik Zijn dood bezoeken kon.
Een zwarte leegte in de zon
Gaapt de spelonk mij aan.

O wát ik hoopte in mijn verdriet,
Hij kwam mijn ongeduld nog vóór.
Maar, Die ik door de dood verloor
Vind ik ook levend niet.
 
De olijven met de lichte wind
Verzilvren in de zonneschijn,
Waar ’t hart niets dan zijn oude pijn
langs alle paden vindt.

Maar om de donkre nauwe bocht
Wappert een oogwenk zijn gewaad.
Mij blindt de glans van zijn gelaat.
Hij had MIJ lang gezocht.

 

 

Willem de Mérode (2 september 1887 – 22 mei 1939)

 

De Engelse dichter, schrijver, criticus en letterkundige James Fenton werd geboren op 25 april 1949 in  Lincoln. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2010.

 

Jerusalem (Fragment)

 

6
This is the Garden Tomb.
No,
this
is the Garden Tomb.
I’m an Armenian. I am a Copt.
This is Utopia.
I came here from Ethiopia.
This hole is where the flying carpet dropped
The Prophet off to pray one night
And from here one hour later he resumed his flight.

 

7
Who packed your bag?
I packed my bag.
Where was your uncle’s mother’s sister born?
Have you ever met an Arab?
Yes, I am a scarab.
I am a worm. I am a thing of scorn.
I cry Impure from street to street
And see my degradation in the eyes I meet.

 

8
I am your enemy.
This is Gethsemane.
The broken graves look to the Temple Mount.
Tell me now, tell me when
When shall we all rise again?
Shall I be first in that great body count?
When shall the tribes be gathered in?
When, tell me, when shall the Last Things begin?

 

9
You are in error.
This is terror.
This is your banishment. This land is mine.
This is what you earn.
This is the Law of No Return.
This is the sour dough, this the sweet wine.
This is my history, this my race
And this unhappy man threw acid in my face.

 

10
Stone cries to stone,
Heart to heart, heart to stone.
These are the warrior archaeologists.
This is us and that is them.
This is Jerusalem.
These are dying men with tattooed wrists.
Do this and I’ll destroy your home.
I have destroyed your home.  You have destroyed my home.

 

 

James Fenton (Lincoln, 25 april 1949)

 

 

 

De Engelse dichter Walter John de la Mare werd geboren op 25 april 1873 in Charlton, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 april 2007en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2010.

 

The Keys of Morning

 

While at her bedroom window once,

Learning her task for school,

Little Louisa lonely sat

In the morning clear and cool,

She slanted her small bead-brown eyes

Across the empty street,

And saw Death softly watching her

In the sunshine pale and sweet.

 

His was a long lean sallow face;

He sat with half-shut eyes,

Like a old sailor in a ship

Becalmed ‘neath tropic skies.

Beside him in the dust he had set

His staff and shady hat;

These, peeping small, Louisa saw

Quite clearly where she sat –

The thinness of his coal-black locks,

His hands so long and lean

They scarcely seemed to grasp at all

The keys that hung between:

Both were of gold, but one was small,

And with this last did he

Wag in the air, as if to say,

“Come hither, child, to me!”

 

Louisa laid her lesson book

On the cold window-sill;

And in the sleepy sunshine house

Went softly down, until

She stood in the half-opened door,

And peeped. But strange to say

Where Death just now had sunning sat

Only a shadow lay:

Just the tall chimney’s round-topped cowl,

And the small sun behind,

Had with its shadow in the dust

Called sleepy Death to mind.

But most she thought how strange it was

Two keys that he should bear,

And that, when beckoning, he should wag

The littlest in the air.

 

 

Walter John de la Mare (25 april 1873 – 22 juni 1956)

Portret door Powys Evans

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Ted Kooser werd geboren op 25 april 1939 in Ames, Iowa. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2010.

 

Carrie


“There’s never an end to dust
and dusting,” my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There’s never an end to it.

 

 

Skater


She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,
she began to braid a loose path that broadened
into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped
and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs
and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves
lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn
there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,
skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back
at the woman she’d been just an instant before.

 

 

Ted Kooser (Ames, 25 april 1939)

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. werd geboren op 25 april 1914 in Bloomington, Indiana. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 april 2009 en ookmijn blog van 25 april 2010.

 

Uit: Raintree County

 

My brother and I were horsing around on our twin beds, struggling over the small lead replica of the Empire State Building our father had brought back from the East. Ernest aimed it at me as if it were a gun–“Bang! Bang! Pow!”–and on my back I deflected the bullets, kicking up at him fearlessly. Our anarchy was the better for knowing we’d have to put on Sunday School penitentials before long. The door opened and in walked our mother and Grandma Lockridge, which stopped our play. They were sleepy eyed. Ernest, aged nine, knew something was wrong. Our mother placed her hand gently on his shoulder and said, “Honey, your father is dead. He died last night.”

Ernest screamed and fell sobbing on the floor and I, aged five, was puzzled and a little embarrassed, for Mom and Grandma didn’t make it sound so bad. Our father had been tired, he needed a rest, he was now in a warm and sunny land, but no, he wouldn’t be coming home soon.

I tried to see my father in a space above my own, walking care free amid trees and flowers, and hoped he’d soon be rested up.

Later that morning Ernest still lay on the floor. He’d stopped crying but hoped his mother would come in and find him lying there–then she would know how much he had loved his father and how dead with grief he was. But she was busy with funeral preparations, and he was tired of lying on the cold floorboards and got up and dressed.“

 

 

Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. (25 april 1914 – 6 maart 1948)

 

 

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Richard Anders werd geboren op 25 april 1928 in Ortelsburg, tegenwoordig Szczytno, Polen. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 april 2007en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 april 2010.
 

Steinbläue über dem Dolchschatten

 

Weil das Fleisch
mit dem Knochen schläft
rollen Augen über den Tisch
tanzt löwenbeinig
der Tisch übers Meer
öffnet das Meer Fenster
über einem Meer von Gesichtern

 

 

Anima

für Amina

 

Ein Leib aus Hauch
ziehst du mich
auf dein Tier
farnst zur Vogelfeder
schreibst Geäder
von Lust auf das blinde Ei
das ich bin
bis es zum Brunnen
geht und bricht
und ich als Blitz
aus der Schale schlüpfe
von der Nacht
deiner Augen gespiegelt

 

Richard Anders (Ortelsburg, 25 april 1928)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e april ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.