De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver, vertaler en bloemlezer X.J. Kennedy werd geboren in Dover, New Jersey op 21 augustus 1929. Zie ook alle tags voor X. J. Kennedy op dit blog.
ANT TRAP
Innocuous as a dock, giving off whiffs
Of roast beef, rare, and bathtubfuls of gin
Free to the rank-and-file of working stiffs,
This tin-canned Siren lures the suckers in.
A skull and crossbones on her lid warns men—
As if they’d overhear!—to watch for reefs,
But how could that turn back an ant, his skin
Already bone, to whom death’s head is life’s?
Out through her punctured doors, down winding roads,
Each totes home his own and his kinsmen’s doom In trust.
Recall those fourteen-year-old broads
Who’d stand across the street from Napoleon’s Tomb,
Beckoning not with fingers but perfume
The tired GI in quest of other wars
And kinder arms than guns to come home from,
Remember how they stretched forth open pores.
Not that the gift he brought home was the clap,
Although he might have, no, nor just the can
Of Spanish fly our good Rotarian
Smuggled back home to storm the girl friend’s lap,
No dirtybook nor head cut from a Jap
Scrubbed to a whitened skull in some latrine,
Nothing to shove a pin through on a map,
But wider than La Belle France’s belle poitrine.
And now, kcmpt creature moving in his files,
Social, in press, with jawbone razored sleek,
Hopping the shuttle daily, vaulting miles
To and from Scarsdale, listening to the click
Of the same rails, back to his Blessed Isles
Delivered nightly—do his nerves go slack,
Eyes empty, does he sip with frozen smile
His scotch-and-water in a state of shock,
Or find, perhaps, his death so slow to come,
And slow death a far cry from what he needs,
That his sons hold him someone to turn from
And, drop-outs, seek some anarchy or creed
Of their own brew to live by? Growing numb,
His sunken livingroom erupting weeds,
He sees them blow their minds apart like bombs,
And, sooner than believe him, die from speed.
Then, too, the failure’s failure: grooved and scarred
The hands that planted dreams, but never plucked.
You see him in most bars if you look hard.
Thrashing the day’s war rumors. You’d suspect
Him of one long decline from having warred
With someone not himself. His stares extract
Invisible bayonets—he’d show the world,
Clean out the bastards. So his beers reflect.
By those soft weakening lights, you’d guess how all
That army shuttling through it in a train
With nothing but its sweetness on the brain
Must feel when, home, their pulsebeats falter and stall
And, clutching sides, they double up in pain,
Their footholds loosen, and they start to fall,
Reach forth slow feelers, grope, catch fast again,
Stiffening columns in behind a wall.
GEOMETRY
They say who play at blindman’s buff
And strive to fathom space
That a straight line drawn long enough
Regains its starting place And that two lines laid parallel
Which neither stop nor swerve
At last will meet, for, strange to tell,
Space throws them both a curve.
Such guesswork lets my hopes abide,
For though today you spurn
My heart and cast me from your side
One day I shall return;
And though at present we may go
Our lonely ways, a tether
Shall bind our paths till time be through
And we two come together.
De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Elisabeth Alexander werd geboren op 21 augustus 1922 in Linz am Rhein. Zie ook alle tags voor Elisabeth Alexander op dit blog.
De anderen
Talen
die ik het niet versta
woorden
die ik niet ken
gezichten
die vreemde uitdrukkingen
hebben
kom ik tegen
in de tram
bij de supermarktkassa’s
en kinderen
die zwijgend
het vreemde vergezellen
kijken me aan
omdat ik net zo vreemd voor ze
ben
en ik denk erover na
of deze mensen
graag in dit land
zijn
en ik zou ze graag hebben
gevraagd
wat ze denken
als ze het nieuws
zien
of de politici horen
praten
maar eigenlijk weet ik het
bijna zeker
dat niemand van ons ze
zou missen
als ze op een dag
uit het stadsbeeld
van mijn woonplaats
en van die van de andere
Duitsers
weg zouden blijven.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 21e augustus ook mijn blog van 21 augustus 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 21 augustus 2019 en ook mijn blog van 21 augustus 2016 en ook mijn blog van 21 augustus 2016 deel 2.