{"id":2,"date":"2012-06-23T13:17:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-23T12:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/?page_id=3214"},"modified":"2020-09-01T13:48:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T12:48:09","slug":"vogelwater-het-boek","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/?page_id=2","title":{"rendered":"Elly de Waard, poet from the old world"},"content":{"rendered":"

A WILDERNESS OF INTERCONNECTIONS<\/span>
\nEen wildernis van verbindingen<\/span><\/p>\n

9 poems fom a sequence of 82
\nby the Dutch poet<\/em> ELLY DE WAARD\t\t<\/p>\n

18<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Sometimes, when looking at her, I see
\nOnly myself, she reflects me, being
\nRound, inaccessible. Who is it that
\nI know, that I go into,
\nThat goes into her and feels
\nIn the deepest part of her that he
\nIs outside her, who is it that is me? \u2013 I
\nRubbed over the earth, she got wet,
\nI rubbed heart and soul, and she began
\nTo flow, I glided with her<\/em><\/p>\n

Moving; the flakes of her iris
\nDarkened as if clouds were gathering
\nAbove waves, as if a storm were rising.
\nI saw a gazing grow in her. I saw
\nA blinding in her eyes in which
\nI saw myself mirrored, a blinding
\nLaden with my image, that was me. Then
\nMy sleep broke and my dreaming lay
\nOpen and I heard the foghorn
\nComplain the whole ungodly night.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Christine D\u2019haen<\/span><\/p>\n

24<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The ribs of the bridge are laid out
\nLike vertebrae within the lymph of
\nThe air and tremble in the heat.
\nBack that arches from the bank
\nTo an other side. Through the land-
\nScape flash mirrors, windowpanes,
\nGlinting edges of blades. Wind
\nRolls in carried on light over the
\nCrests of waves, his slaves. Blazing
\nThey run stooped beneath his<\/em><\/p>\n

Royal blows. The sky briefly
\nGurgles out of her metallic
\nThroats. Villages, cities reside
\nInvisibly behind their names.
\nWilderness of interconnections,
\nAn extension of ribs; I slide
\nDown the nodes of her back,
\nRope ladder toward a jungle of
\nBliss. Between the back roads and the
\nEnd, is there a true mean?<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

28<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

What makes something brilliant
\nIs its clarity, broken
\nUp by a sharp pattern:
\nThe wind among leaves
\nOn a sparkling day,
\nThe falling of water in
\nA silvery stream, branches
\nFrenzied by frost on
\nA winter\u2019s night, glass
\nLenses that broke her melting<\/em><\/p>\n

Glance; the blow of the axe splitting
\nGlittering wood, the axe
\nThat shatters into
\nA splintering crown \u2013
\nAnd nothing for me to get
\nUp for other than whether
\nI\u2019m hungry or in pain \u2013
\nOh, how blindingly un-
\nDiminished things can be
\nSometimes in memory.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

29<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

On silver feet the cutlery
\nTiptoes through its meal. She sits
\nStraight as a board while I slouch.
\nStately as zeppelins insects
\nHover among the roses
\nWhose buds stage the contours
\nOf Instanbul, but then without
\nMinarets. I dished up our
\nHappiness, but my appetite
\nFor her has no taste for a food
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Other than hers. We cool ourselves
\nWith the napkins. I want her
\nBarer, her back worn smooth as
\nIvory by the fingering
\nOf a thousand and one nights
\nI want to see wholly perfect. Polish
\nSpatters off her nails as her high-
\nHeeled movement around the table
\nNears. I lay her out in the grass and
\nOpen her like a fan unfolding.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

40<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Who can read Plato\u2019s symposium
\nAnymore, where even before the
\nDiscussion begins the women are
\nSent away, where the highest lauded
\nLove is that between men? What self-
\nRespecting woman? It will all
\nHave to be rewritten! To my friend,
\nWho buttons his cuffs with paperclips,
\nPreferably the ones of his tux, I
\npointed out that the most highly
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Developed animal societies
\nAre the feminized ones and he
\nwas stunned. But our discourse \u2013 about
\nResentment \u2013 was light and learned and we
\nDined. Soon we could be seen on
\nThe dance floor, doing a foxtrot.
\nHe followed and I led. Oh what
\nA joy, it all had to be turned
\nOn its head and stay that way, on that
\nWe had meanwhile agreed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

44 ANADYOMENE<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

So beautiful, the way her
\nNaked body leaps through the
\nBreakers, her breasts high, her arms
\nAn extension of her back
\nReach up. Beneath her skin like
\nStill never developed
\nWings that want to open
\nOut I see her shoulder blades
\nMoving briskly. An un-
\nDisfigured Venus she is,<\/em><\/p>\n

Rising from the marbled
\nFoam, alive. Ah, how sweet
\nThe way her softness
\nWithstands the muscled waves! She
\nHolds her hands in front of the
\nHollows with wiry hair. Rocks
\nKneel down before her, resting
\nAgainst each other offering
\nThe masterfully polished
\nForms of their backs to<\/em><\/p>\n

Her. In sculpting their masses
\nThe polisher of the tides needed his
\nEons, but nature was able
\nTo create her perfection
\nIn a brief thirty-one years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

49<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The polders lie snowbound, the roads are
\nWhite with salt, the overcast of clouds
\nHangs low and it is cold. Heaven and
\nEarth are an envelope folding around
\nThe void. The sun comes up like a
\nTraffic light. A crane spews steely
\nCables like a dragon and in a sandy-
\nBacked ridge the ribs of tractors
\nLie cracked and crushed. Over paved
\nRises, in which the ruts of carts
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Are inlaid like rails, those
\nBorn with wheels rush along like
\nRats or lemmings. And once again
\nI enter into this human
\nTraffic. The clouds stoop down until they touch
\nThe ground and cars speed off. Flurries of
\nSnow whirl from the skies, in swift pursuit
\nOf them. Oh, this ache of absence that has no
\nFuture, not because the other is
\nGone, but because she\u2019s still there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

70<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

For weeks on end the wind
\nWas the only one to come by. No
\nTelephones cut off or
\nFinal notices, just sleep
\nAnd the stirring of the sea
\nAnd on some evenings a silent
\nMovie like a sunset
\nTaken in, a tautly stretched
\nScreen down which the bleeding
\nBody slides, the sky is
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The color of raw meat. I write
\nPoems and mend, write and heal.
\nThen one time at a bar, an
\nAngel, glued to the jukebox
\nAs if to wings, cigarette
\nTucked in mouth, is humming
\nTo the love songs, we are
\nThe only ones,<\/em> love hurts,
\nWrite and heal, the wing
\nOf night bends over the sea.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n

79<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The mountains smoke from the autumn-
\nFires they stoke, and all the trees
\nHave ruby cheeks from the
\nGlow. I was going to the North
\nThrough the darkening forests of
\nEurope, rusting in the autumn,
\nRusty with cars, through villages
\nWithout sidewalks, like chasms; the
\nLong shadow of October
\nAlready dwells there. Along neural
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Pathways that pass through the valleys \u2013
\nIn the gray of highways and of
\nTrains and everything\u2019s wet with rain \u2013
\nThe metallic gulf stream
\nOf the traffic pulsates. The West is
\nLonely now, the millennium
\nIs ending. What is sweeping away
\nThe clouds, the web of industry,
\nAnd blowing in from the fields
\nIs a womanly wind.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Wanda Boeke<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A WILDERNESS OF INTERCONNECTIONS<\/span>
\nEen wildernis van verbindingen<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page_vogelwater.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":96,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25021,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/25021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellydewaard.nl\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}