Hans Lodeizen

Translated by James Brockway

Voice Wise yet Stammering

People will say again:
no you don't speak for us
your voice is an internal thunderstorm,
not in my line, you can count me
out people will turn their backs on me


and they're right of course they're right
but a thunderstorm no soft music
on a spinet issuing from
â summerhouse suspended from cobwebs
on a Sunday morning with a princess


how far the calendar is
from my hands, how high time
hangs above my head I laugh
out of sheer bewilderment I weep
out of pure chagrin I live
they say I am a living being
I have responsibilities
I might die they say
and then, they say...



Jim, I'd Like to Know

Jim, I'd like to know
what makes it worth your while
to go on writing
letters, essays, poems
in which you praise the world
expertly assessing its worth
like some merchant.
how come you never grow
tired and close your eyes and
think I wish they'd all go
to hell with their natter
and go on writing
letters, essays, poems
from which I can recognise
you and meet you laughing
and giving me courage
for I'm so tired and while
I'm speaking hope's seeping away
Jim, what makes it worth your while
to go on writing
letters, essays, poems...etc.



The World an Old Music Box

the world an old music box that must sing


the dancer it is his body that sings
the writer it is his life that sings
the musician his head
the poet his throat
and the sculptor his fingers that sing in the stone
it is the world that sings


the world an old music box


but the lovers sing too their bodies sing
from the world the whole world a song ascends
into the night the sick man sends the guitar of his longing
and the lonely child plays on his body as on a guitar
(in the afternoon a sad song rises between his fingers)
the exhausted travellers too sing in train or omnibus
and the murderer sings with the knife in his fingers
and the thief sings with the beads in his hand
(and the sailor sings in bed with a tango).

​

Hans Lodeizen (1924-1950) died of leukaemia at just twenty-six, but his reputation and popularity as a poet continued to grow in the decades following his death, especially with successive generations of young readers. One of the first Dutch poets to draw on the power of colloquial language, his poetry moved away from the styles of the pre-war period and paved the way for the experiment of the 1950s. Although his premature death prevented him from joining his contemporaries in the Vijftigers, they saw him as a kindred spirit and helped promote his work. ‘Jim’ in the poem below is Lodeizen’s friend, James Merrill.



‘Voice Wise yet Stammering’ and ‘Jim, I’d Like to Know’ from Singers behind Glass, Sunk Island Publishing, 1995
‘The World an Old Music Box’ is from Dutch Interior, Postwar Poetry of the Netherlands and Flanders, Columbia University Press, 1984

The originals are in Verzamelde gedichten, Van Oorschot, Amsterdam, 1996

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