Jan Arends

Translated by David Colmer

*

I
write poems
like thin trees.


Who
could speak
in language
as lean
as mine?


Maybe
my father
was mean
with his seed.


I
never
met
the man.


I never
heard
a real word
unless it hurt.


To write
hurt
you don’t need
many words.


*


I have
a house.


The house
I have
is my life.


What I have done.


What I am.


I never
ask people
to my house.


I know
that those
who drink my coffee
later hang themselves.




*


Now the weather
is so evil
and the waves
so high
I sing the virtues
of the sea
without end.


I call her
the silver-smooth mother
of all things
and depth without malevolence
and bride to all the lonely
and sea of all that is good.


Later in port
I’ll go back to calling her a whore
and a stinking stuck-up bitch.

​

Jan Arends (1925-1974) was a poet, short-story writer and translator whose work was heavily influenced by his disadvantaged background, wartime deprivations and post-war poverty. He led an isolated and tormented existence and was institutionalised several times before finally jumping to his death from his Amsterdam flat. His short but highly evocative oeuvre still attracts readers and foreign publication.






The originals of ‘I write poems’, ‘I have a house’ and ‘Now the weather’ are in Vrijgezel op kamers, Verzameld werk, Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 2003 

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