De Amerikaanse dichter, librettist en essayist Scott Cairns werd geboren op 19 november 1954 in Tacoma, Washington. Zie ook alle tags voor Scott Cairns op dit blog.

 

Threnody

The dream is recurrent, and yes
the dream can leave me weeping,
waking with a start, confused,
and pressing my wet face hard
into the pillow. That is to say
the dream is very bitter.

The scenes are various, the gist
unchanging: my father returns,
and we all are at once elated
that his death was apparently
an error, that he had simply
been away, a visit to the shore.

Then, increasingly, I grow
uneasy about how deeply
he has changed. He is both frail
and distracted (or it could be
that he withholds some matter
habiting his mind), and none of us

dares speak, neither of his death nor
of his sudden, startling return.
We share other confusions as well:
He has arrived in the camper truck
he drove when I was a boy, but my wife
and children are also here to greet him,

even my son, whom he has never met.
Often, in the dream, I am the one
who first suspects he cannot stay.
I am the one who sees but cannot say
his visit will be brief. And just
as I suspected, as I feared, I wake.

 

Irreducible is what I’m after,

which is why I cannot mind so much observing
how words are more precise or less precise, but they
are not exact. Not ever. No. And yes, each proves
solicitous and pleasant on the tongue, and more
than a little tolerant of one’s most earnest
yammering; still, the promise of each word abides
within its endless, inarticulate expanse,
thank God. The dancing figures of the utterance
forever spin their circles; they forever turn
upon the sawdust littered floor. And even as
I speak I see my good intentions leaping clean
beyond my reach, and each for its duration lifts
the stillness into trouble. For its bright moment,
each obtains for each a little taste of what lit
distance one might entertain, thus irreducible.

 

Necropolis

Niet zomaar een ijsje, hoewel de glans
van deze skeletachtige figuren de
gemoedstoestand van die grijnzende snoepjes raken
die jein Mexico vindt, zeg maar, begin november ,
hoewel hier elk gezicht verontrustend bekend is,
de stijl vertoont die je aanneemt, net als je
elke verdere stijl afwijst—nectar die je drinkt als je
je laatste, emotieloze adem uitblaast, burger
wordt van een minder serieus electoraat. Je leert
in die stad eindelijk hoe je van een lekkernij kunt genieten,
zelfs als je een echte smaak voor deze omstandigheid
nog moet verwerven, zelfs als je het zelf bent
wiens suikers en oliën nu een kalmte bieden
die belooft nooit te eindigen, noch te veranderen.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e november ook mijn blog van 19 november 2020 en ook mijn blog van 19 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 19 november 2017 deel 3.

De Amerikaanse dichter, librettist en essayist Scott Cairns werd geboren op 19 november 1954 in Tacoma, Washington. Zie ook alle tags voor Scott Cairns op dit blog.

 

Recitation

He did not fall then, blind upon a road,
nor did his lifelong palsy disappear.
He heard no voice, save the familiar,

ceaseless, self-interrogation
of the sore perplexed. The kettle steamed
and whistled. A heavy truck downshifted

near the square. He heard a child calling,
and heard a mourning dove intone its one
dull call. For all of that, his wits remained

quite dim. He breathed and spoke the words he read.
If what had been long dead then came alive,
that resurrection was by all appearances

metaphorical. The miracle arrived
without display. He held a book, and as he read
he found the very thing he’d sought. Just that.

A life with little hurt but one, the lucky gift
of a raveled book, a kettle slow to heat,
and time enough therefore to lift the book

and find in one slight passage the very wish
he dared not ask aloud, until, that is,
he spoke the words he read.

 

Necropolitan

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze
of these skeletal figures affects
the disposition of those grinning candies
one finds in Mexico, say, at the start of November,
though here, each face is troublingly familiar,
exhibits the style adopted just as one declines
any further style—nectar one sips just as he
draws his last, dispassionate breath, becomes
citizen of a less earnest electorate. One learns
in that city finally how to enjoy a confection,
even if a genuine taste for this circumstance
has yet to be acquired, even if it is oneself
whose sugars and oils now avail a composure
which promises never to end, nor to alter.

 

Late Results

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
—Milosz

And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.
So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.

The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced.
Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided strong light.

The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remained hungry.
Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them.

Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin.
The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves.

Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouths shut.
Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in the hope.

 

Mogelijke antwoorden op gebed

Jouw smeekbeden – ook al dragen ze nog steeds
slechts één handtekening zijn naar behoren geregistreerd.
Jouw zorgen – ondanks hun voortdurende,

relatief beperkte reikwijdte en onbedoelde
entertainmentwaarde, helpen desalniettemin
om jouw persoon levendig voor de geest te brengen.

Jouw berouw – vrijwel geheel verborgen onder
een ontluikende, gele mist van eerlijk gezegd meer
opvallende wrok is voldoende.

Jouw voortdurende zorg voor de zieke,
de lijdende, de behoeftige armen zijn soms
herkenbaar voor mij, zo niet voor hen.

Jouw woede, jouw ijver, jouw lippensmakkende
rechtvaardige verontwaardiging jegens de velen
wiens gewoonten en sympathieën je beledigen –

deze moeten wegbranden voordat je kunt begrijpen
hoe dichtbij ik ben, met welke hartstocht ik juist deze
aanbid, de handvol die je passies opwekken.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e november ook mijn blog van 19 november 2020 en ook mijn blog van 19 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 19 november 2017 deel 3.

De Amerikaanse dichter, librettist en essayist Scott Cairns werd geboren op 19 november 1954 in Tacoma, Washington. Zie ook alle tags voor Scott Cairns op dit blog.

 

First Storm and Thereafter

What I notice first within
this rough scene fixed
in memory is the rare
quality of its lightning, as if
those bolts were clipped
from a comic book, pasted
on low cloud, or fashioned
with cardboard, daubed
with gilt then hung overhead
on wire and fine hooks.
What I hear most clearly
within that thunder now
is its grief—a moan, a long
lament echoing, an ache.
And the rain? Raucous enough,
pounding, but oddly
musical, and, well,
eager to entertain, solicitous.

No storm since has been framed
with such matter-of-fact
artifice, nor to such comic
effect. No, the thousand-plus
storms since then have turned
increasingly artless,
arbitrary, bearing—every
one of them—a numbing burst.

And today, from the west a gust
and a filling pressure
pulsing in the throat—offering
little or nothing to make light of.

 

Idiot Psalms

4

Isaak’s penitential psalm, unaccompanied.

Again, and yes again, O Ceaseless Tolerator
of our bleaking recurrences, O Forever Forgoing
Foregone (sans conclusion), O Inexhaustible,
I find my face against the floor, and yet again
my plea escapes from unclean lips, and from a heart
caked in and constricted by its own soiled residue.
You are forever, and forever blessed, and I aspire
one day to slip my knot and change things up,
to manage at least one late season sinlessly,
to bow before you yet one time without chagrin.

 

Eremiet

—Katounakia, 2007

De grot zelf is aangenaam sober,
met weinig rommel – niets behalve
een smalle plaat, een versleten wollen omslagdoek,
en in de afgebroken uitsparing hier
drie roetige iconen verlicht door een olielamp.
Net voorbij de opening van de donkere grot,
rust een zwartgeblakerde ketel tussen de kolen,
waarmee, elke middag, een handvol
wilde groenten wordt gekookt tot een malse brij.
De eremiet ligt op de grond dichtbij
twee boeken – een evangelie en het verzameld proza
van de Syriër – waarvan de pagina’s omslaan,
geholpen door een briesje. Naast de sliert
van houtrook die uit de kolen opstijgt,
trekt geen andere beweging de aandacht. Het gezicht
van de oude man wordt in de aarde gedrukt,
zijn lichaam uitgerekt alsof hij vooruit wil reiken.
De pot kookt droog. Hij voedt zich met wat
we niet zien en zou verzadigd kunnen zijn.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e november ook mijn blog van 19 november 2020 en ook mijn blog van 19 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 19 november 2017 deel 3.

De Amerikaanse dichter, librettist en essayist Scott Cairns werd geboren op 19 november 1954 in Tacoma, Washington. Zie ook alle tags voor Scott Cairns op dit blog.

 

Loves

Magdalen’s Epistle

Of Love’s discrete occasions, we
observe sufficient catalogue,
a likely-sounding lexicon

pronounced so as to implicate
a wealth of difference, where reclines
instead a common element,

itself quite like those elements
partaken at the table served
by Jesus on the night he was

betrayed—like those in that the bread
was breakable, the wine was red
and wet, and met the tongue with bright,

intoxicating sweetness, quite
like… wine. None of what I write arrives
to compromise that sacrament,

the mystery of spirit graved
in what is commonplace and plain—
the broken, brittle crust, the cup.

Quite otherwise, I choose instead
to bear again the news that each,
each was still itself, substantial

in the simplest sense. By now, you
will have learned of Magdalen, a name
recalled for having won a touch

of favor from the one we call
the son of man, and what you’ve heard
is true enough. I met him first

as, mute, he scribbled in the dust
to shame some village hypocrites
toward leaving me unbloodied,

if ill-disposed to taking up
again a prior circumstance.
I met him in the house of one

who was a Pharisee and not
prepared to suffer quietly
my handling of the master’s feet.

Much later, in the garden when,
having died and risen, he spoke
as to a maid and asked me why

I wept. When, at any meeting
with the Christ, was I not weeping?
For what? I only speculate

—brief inability to speak,
a weak and giddy troubling near
the throat, a wash of gratitude.

And early on, I think, some slight
abiding sense of shame, a sop
I have inferred more recently

to do without. Lush poverty!
I think that this is what I’m called
to say, this mild exhortation

that one should still abide all love’s
embarrassments, and so resist
the new temptation—dangerous,

inexpedient mask—of shame.
And, well, perhaps one other thing:
I have received some little bit

about the glib divisions which
so lately have occurred to you
as right, as necessary, fit

That the body is something less
than honorable, say, in its
… appetites? That the spirit is

something pure, and—if all goes well—
potentially unencumbered
by the body’s bawdy tastes.

This disposition, then, has led
to a banal and pious lack
of charity, and, worse, has led

more than a few to attempt some
soul-preserving severance—harsh
mortifications, manglings, all

manner of ritual excision
lately undertaken to prevent
the body’s claim upon the heart,

or mind, or (blasphemy!) spirit—
whatever name you fix upon
the supposéd bodiless.

I fear that you presume—dissecting
the person unto something less
complex. I think that you forget

you are not Greek. I think that you
forget the very issue which
induced the Christ to take on flesh.

All loves are bodily, require
that the lips part, and press their trace
of secrecy upon the one

beloved—the one, or many, endless
array whose aspects turn to face
the one who calls, the one whose choice

it was one day to lift my own
bruised body from the dust, where, it seems
to me, I must have met my death,

thereafter, this subsequent life
and late disinclination toward
simple reductions in the name

of Jesus, whose image I work
daily to retain. I have kissed
his feet. I have looked long

into the trouble of his face,
and met, in that intersection,
the sacred place—where body

and spirit both abide, both yield,
in mutual obsession. Yes,
if you’ll recall your Hebrew word.

just long enough to glimpse in its
dense figure power to produce
you’ll see as well the damage Greek

has wrought upon your tongue, stolen
from your sense of what is holy,
wholly good, fully animal—

the body which he now prepares.

 

Een woord
Voor A. B.

Ze zei God. Hij lijkt er te zijn
wanneer ik Hem aanroep maar aanroepen
is ook moeilijk geweest. Pijnlijk.

En terwijl ze stil werd om een ander woord
te zoeken, was ik nog een keer
overgeleverd aan mijn eigen lange worsteling

met diezelfde engel hier — nog steeds
hier —  aan de voet van de oude
Paradijsladder, in vuil stof

smachtend nochtans helemaal
op de onderste tree, liet mijn greep varen
lang voor de zegen.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e november ook mijn blog van 19 november 2020 en ook mijn blog van 19 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 19 november 2017 deel 3.