Gerrit ACHTERBERG
1905 - 1962
Proeve van vertaling naar het Engels
Traveller "does" Golgotha
Charwoman
Snow
Behind the end
Dream foam
Loneliness
Dream judgment
The painting
The nameless
Ebenezer
Ballad of the gas-fitter
I
They nailed Him, and they didn't care
if such a torture He could bear,
on a cross that had been set up there.
And hanging there and suffering,
- a nail is quite an aweful thing -
He said: Father forgive their sin.
He said: they don't know what they do.
For what they wanted there to do,
was finding out what He would do!
So did He pray for them a while,
and fixed up, being near to die,
their conscience with an alibi.
And I stood quasi talking not so far away
with some simple useless soldiers ordered there to stay.
What could I do? They wanted things that way.
But He appealed to the last mainstay:
His Father's hands; - 't was not yet Easter Day
when my ship from Jaffa sailed away.
II
I read then - 't was on Cyprus - in a news report:
J. of N., Christ also called,
who was three days ago by soldiers caught
and crucified, as our dear readers have been told,
was not found in His grave: the stone was set apart.
Lots of rumours are abroad, of which most part
say His disciples stalked the guard,
who was asleep, and took the corpse away.
But some exalted women came to say
that they had seen Him walking in the middle of the day.
Mary must have stuttered: for God's sake!
And there are also fishermen, who state:
He has been eating with us at the lake.
But his has been denied on good authorities.
One should take care that one knows chalk from cheese.
III
Rome. - The anchor falls. We're home again.
I first go to the thermae, am deloused and
sobered and hurry to my dwelling then,
where I sit down by fire and radio and wife,
and Christ and cross are no more in my life.
… Then in my soul an S.O.S. stabs like a knife:
"My spirit on all flesh will be poured out.
It's for or against me, I allow no doubt",
a Secret Sender signals white and loud.
I sail again on lonely sea
that keeps divided You from me.
At the horizon, Christ, do please appear to me.
Charwoman
She knows the underside of cupboard, bed and seat,
forgotten chinks and never-opened drawers,
for she belongs, when creeping on the floors,
among the animals, which move on hands and feet.
Her life's devoted to the floor, which she
keeps clean and polished for the feet
of poets, grocers, vicars; men indeed
so different from her in rank and in degree.
She will be walking once on heaven's floor
through golden streets towards the throne of God,
while beating with the brush upon the pan.
Symbols turn to cymbals in the hour
of death - and look, all at defiance of her lot,
there are the beak, the baker and the clergyman.
Snow
A slanting wall of snowing
comes leaning at my shoulder;
it's pushed by brother winter
and sister silence, - would there
still be tidings, yonder
behind that screen so white,
but snowflakes, clocks and chilly cool
over the world and a heart,
all alike in the winter night.
Behind the end
Together lay still the wind and her clothes
but I knew it was over;
somewhere up against the stars
did the mystery explode, but who believes
that it ends with this, what so began
that it could mass the elements
within one grip, within one blood?
what so began
that I could not believe it myself
that I did not know why it began
than that it could have no other end
than in eternity.
Dream foam
Dream foam was last night
a solid face and warming clothes.
We talked a lot and fast,
because it couldn't last.
You were remarried, he saw
that we were intimate.
He lowered then his eyes
and did not twit.
You disregarded him:
again arose in bird's-eye view
the ancient ground-plans we once knew,
revocably. Revocably.
You said: now we must part.
Your coat grew stiff and your lips.
Then I woke up with a start:
on hinges of eternity
time was closing turningly
like a door behind your hips.
Loneliness
O windows of my loneliness
along which evening streams do take
their beds, water and light
do mix before my sight
without a sound to twilight full of gleam;
all in all is flowing down,
just I alone remain upright:
a token sombred in its own.
Dream judgment
The clock is master of the room,
monotonous laws
are murmuring in the evening,
there's no one who can change its rules,
there's no one who's let through.
Today I've been accused,
tonight I'm being tried.
Silence in the hall,
the cupboard's breathing's all
that's heard, a mother's watching me.
Wind and rain outside
are pleading and defending,
wind and rain outside
are pleading and defending
the judge with streams of reasonings.
Minutes and minutes
give tinkling starts;
hours are gasping on
and four walls are complaining
for a single word
of forgiving before morning,
for an answer of forgiving,
for an answer before morning.
The painting
A painting old and dark there is
above my bed. At night
light always keeps aside
up to the list.
The figure is all blotted out;
it's dark now on that countryside.
O painting old o painting dark
above my bed at night.
I still remember from today:
two people on it, hand in hand
lying on a flowered bent;
it's past it is all over now
it's old and dark a painting now
just hanging on the wall.
The nameless
The nameless, meaningless of this:
to be among people like a stone
lost among the pavement stones;
o number dead in empty sum alone.
Autumn take me with your leaves.
This September is too white
to wonder in alone
and I am like a leaf alone.
Let me turn to earth again
with earth all over me;
the only shape that kept me here
has gone
Ebenezer
Closed Saturday night by us at home.
Fog feet stole along the barn.
No soul left outside at that hour;
a locked up safe the blue dark farm.
We lived together there with men and mice
Through cowshed windows fell a ridge of light,
everlasting, from gold lamps on the floor,
and still with linseed cakes and hay inside.
That's where my father celebrated Mass:
he fed the cows, solemnly by their heads.
Their tongues like fish curl round his hands.
A shadow, crosswise up until the ridge.
Faith hung heavily between the collar beams.
It has begun, the hardening of his veins.
Ballad of the gas-fitter
I
You've reached the houses round the back. Behind
the fronts, in chambers dim and motionless,
you keep non-stop appearing out of nothingness
when I pass by and look in through the blind.
Although in passing by you disappear again,
the window next shows nothing but the same.
Behind it live a Johnson and his kin,
as if you would evade me in this name.
But that says nothing. Doors do much forbear;
they have a letter-box, a doorstep and a bell.
The apple-seller lures you with his call.
And forged keys are anything but rare.
I can come in - dead innocent - as well
to offer you my services; gas-fitter is my call.
II
Then - in your house at work in shining midday-light,
- disguised with all the outfit of a workman of the town -
I cast about my eyes and get you in my sight.
But the ceiling slowly turns to a slab of stone.
We're getting dim. The walls are all of earth.
The room is saturated, as I see. It cannot be
indeed. I turn the screws for all I'm worth.
As long as I confine myself to this activity
I know that for each other we stay incognito,
while, bent or on my knees, I'm busy all along
or, lying on my belly, examine what is wrong.
And thinking all the time that it is better so.
Death silence, which a hammer-blow destroys.
Death silence, which heals the hammer-blows.
III
Shall I submerge the house? Or shall I break
the conduit-pipes so that the gas can run?
I see my fall, must mind the fittings, so I make
the mental error rapidly undone.
Then later in the papers would be read:
'By some mysterious cause a fitter met
- while practising his trade - with death.
Asphyxia by gas. In the adjacent room
was found a woman, owner of the house, to whom
the same unlucky fate had come. She
lay upon the floor; in her extended hand
she firmly clasped a letter, which began:
'I will come back, large as the world may be'.
Must have been caught while reading it. Surmise
of sinful intercourse can therefore not arise.
IV
I've stopped the leak at last and get
my things, which lie all scattered in the place.
My legs do feel as heavy pipes of lead
and drops of sweat are running down my face.
As if I do perform a superhuman deed,
I wave my hand - a gesture to declare -
and turn to you, but you are no more there.
Late midday-light is all that I can see.
I lift the tool-box from the floor
and put it on my shoulder. In the hall
my footsteps wake a hollow song.
The door falls to. Street-noise seems more
remote and low. Thick fog is blurring all.
I realize: at this turn I have been wrong.
V
When I'm back home and leisurely
begin to eat, the telephone rings loud.
I pick up the receiver and dead commonly
does from the other side a new command come out.
It's the director. His voice is loud and strident too,
but I can feel a hidden, tender undertone.
'Tomorrow you shall visit that street again, my son.
You know that I do take much interest in you.'
No donkey hits its foot two times against a stone.
It would be best for me to stay here not alone.
I might as well go out and have a look tonight
at the new-built block of flats there at the other side.
At the entrance there are numbers, I can see.
It will get clear now by itself to me.
VI
All that I came to know that night
was that the porter was sleeping in his bed.
He had forgotten the figures in his head.
'T lay canted on an arm. Gripped by that sight
I looked in through the window from outside.
It rustled softly. A gentle breeze passed by.
And there, undutiful, and ever so close by
a living man, who surely on this tight
corner could have helped me out, if it
had not become too dark and desolate
than that I was allowed to wake him up
by whispering. He'd lose his head; not only he,
but also the director. That could not be.
Nobody heard me go away. Did he look up?
VII
With sleep still in my eyes, at peep of day,
I get my tools and start then on my way.
The streets so early seem as free as air,
although the final aim has taken post somewhere.
I've never known that safe sensation in my life.
Someone of the board is cycling through the street.
He hardly looks aside, although I stop to greet.
He must have had a quarrel with his wife.
Perhaps he thinks it is suspect to find
me here in borough-quarters. To his mind
nothing can be gained by a fitter in this place.
There lives, in other light, a young and reckless race.
I have been signalised. So I turn round
and I decide to bend my steps to town.
VIII
I near the last of possibilities.
Push-buttons, keenly ranked and white,
set at defiance like false teeth.
My fingers make a biting fight.
While I delay and bite my nails,
the door springs loose. A day-girl takes
the ash-bin out. This new event makes
me decide, for I realize: time fails
me. Nervously I ask her where the gap can be.
Her face points upwards with a faded spot,
that may be meant to be a hit at me.
Which I know well; so that I pray to God.
The lift moves upwards to the end
of what no fitter has been able yet to mend.
IX
As I climb up, grows more and more
the space dividing you from me. Life feels
surrounded by nickel and by steel.
The building is no clinch-nail short.
Here is no gas. God is the gap
and pours his depths out over me
to make a puffed-up fitter see
how high he gets at every flat.
The lift goes up past falling floors.
I do not know with what or where to start.
Perhaps into my mind a final word will dart
if I do ask him after the first cause.
I must get out: a shock goes over me.
I give it over now to his decree.
X
All doors swing open. I'm enclosed
by gentlemen of every tongue and race.
They cry in chorus, while they set their face:
you needn't tell us stories, as if I where a ghost.
Did I therefore creep underground? There's
at my feet a bag with dirty wash
when I'm descending in the pit of glass.
Hear how they run one through another there upstairs.
I'm looking round a while in the environment.
It's midday in the meantime. All about
is peak hour now. Schools are coming out.
Children babble at their mother's hand.
Cars rush past. Bike-bells tinkle in my ears,
as if I had been standing there for years.
XI
The gas works turn upon their axis. When
I saw my end in view go all awry
and stole off like a dripping dog then, shy
and well aware that nothing could be done,
a vacuum must have slipped in,
with which no trade has anything to do.
The children are playing in the circle again.
As in reminiscence they're turning too.
I go straight to the office then.
The director in own person lets me in.
He's mild and gentle when he hears
me. I need think up no further lies.
Deep in his specs it crawls, as if he cries.
Then we clasp hands, he mans himself and disappears.
XII
The head-committee of the Christian trade-
union orders that all fitters join without delay
in an urgent meeting on this very day,
and informs that one of them did violate
the rules by acting with his instruments
on all the places where he was. Hence
it demands, now all the body is no longer sound,
that he confesses that he's guilty on this ground.
For the first time since the trade is plied
all gas- and water-fitters of the town
- this time not searching for a gap - kneel down,
together in all corners, side by side.
The chairman says: do sin no longer, please.
And then they leave, dead silent at their ease.
XIII
After many years we find again the fitter
in the old men's home. His hair is white;
a worn out childish chap, who in a guide
of streets is spelling names, letter by letter.
His table and his bed he has to share
with plumber, postman, overseer.
Time and again he gets it there,
because he's always nagging at the fare.
He is provided for until his end.
Sick pay and a burial-fee enable him
to be contented and benevolent
and cause the father not to strangle him.
Public works supplied a roof over his head.
He is allowed to smoke a cigarette.
XIV
At last he closed his eyes and held his breath
for good. His mouth fell open, but was bound.
The undertaker measured him and found
him fit to fill a coffin of six feet.
And everyone gave him a last salute:
Johnson, day-girl and director, they all stood
at the grave, united with those of the flat;
as I in black, with stick and bowler hat.
Everybody further kept his mouth. Then they trod
forward - out of it, without a sound -
to watch the fitter slowly sink into the ground,
as if once more to catch him in a nap
now that he had to fix his final gap.
The earth does cover him. He rests in God.
© 2006 Michel Maasen