Hanny Michaelis

Translated by Judith Wilkinson

*


It’s terrible.
Everything starts afresh
as if nothing
happened.


In thorny branches
the racket of birds.
Squeaking and screeching,
spring sets in. The wind
plucks untuned chords
of hope and delusion.


Nothing
happened. Everything
starts afresh. It’s
terrible.





*

What did you do
that put you on trial
in my dreams
before a tribunal
of inflexible partisans?


In the hollow light
their weary faces
bend over a table
with the evidence:
copper coins
and a charred piece of paper,
curling at the edges.


What did you do 
to make me wrap my arms 
round you in vain,
crying: he is no traitor!


In the window with no view
a soldier appears,
pointing his rifle.


What did you do
to yourself?


​

*

Some days I see gems,
on others they’re bits of scrap.
The light falls as it chooses.
But whether it’s morning or evening,
yesterday or the day after tomorrow,
everything’s still in pieces.

Hanny Michaelis (1922 – 2007) established a reputation as a poet of contained lyricism and her work is tempered by an almost wry awareness of limitation. Her small but distinctive oeuvre has been awarded numerous literary prizes. As the daughter of Jewish parents who died in Sobibor, she was confronted with loss and devastation at an early age. Her difficult marriage to the well-known Dutch novelist Gerard Reve undoubtedly accounts for the mournful note of much of her love poetry.






The originals of ‘It’s terrible’, ‘What did you do’ and ‘Some days I see gems’ can be found in Verzamelde gedichten, Van Oorschot, Amsterdam, 1996.

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