Martinus Nijhoff 
​
Translated by David Colmer

from Awater 

I’ve seen a man. He doesn’t have a name.
Just give him all our first names rolled in one. 
He is a father’s son and born of woman.
Each morning by the rosy light of dawn,
he leaves his suburb, walking past my window.
When evening blues the sky, he comes back home.
At work his colleagues know him as Awater. 
Behold this man who’s clad in camel’s hair
thread through a needle’s eye. His meagre body
is fed on meals of honeycomb and locusts.
The meaning of his cries is lost to all.
It’s wilderness where he lifts up his arms.
He has a monkish air, a soldier’s look,
but no one says a prayer or blows a horn
when solemn books are opened at the office.
They sit at desks as if they’re in a temple
and write in Arabic mixed with Italian.
Columns of enigmatic words rise up
in numbers fluttering down like flakes of ash.
Inside the silent room the summer’s back.
A salty tang wafts from the steady clack
of metal hammers typing balderdash.
Read it, it doesn’t say what it says. It says:
‘Oh, Mother, you will never wear the fur
you counted every penny to afford,
and I won’t come into your public ward
on my days off with flowers in my hand…
I’ll take the roses to Churchyard Row instead.’
That’s what it says. Awater’s stony face
shows motionless how deeply he is moved.
What time is it? He rests his heavy head.
The phone is sleeping on a green baize bed.
The cups have been collected on a trolley.
The clock ticks – chimes – ticks and ticks until five thirty.
It chimes again and all the lamps go out.



The Dancer

There is a captive animal under my skin
That snaps and thrashes trying to escape.
Its dark blood pounds, its bulging muscles quiver,
Pushing hard against its cramped constraint.


Until my veins are flooded with its pain,
Hot and forcing the birth of gestures, whose
Controlled haste and constant balanced grace 
Harness its momentum as it breaks loose.


One must dust one’s features well with powder,
So that only the searing coal-black eyes
Betray the madness of the animal within.


The mouth – lips painted red, stretched wide –
Must be divinely proud to leave no doubt
About the sated triumph of its grin.




The Third Land

Singing and free of memories
I departed from the first of lands,
Singing and free of memories


I came into the second land,
Oh God, this place was strange to me,
Arriving in this second land.


Oh God, this place was strange to me
But let me leave this land again,
Oh leave me free of memories


To sing and reach the third of lands.

​

Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953) was a poet, editor, essayist, playwright and translator (of Eliot and Shakespeare amongst others) and is widely seen as the most important Dutch poet of the pre-war period. His long poem ‘Awater’, famously praised by Joseph Brodsky as ‘one of the grandest works of poetry in this century’, is the classic of modern Dutch poetry and has been translated into many languages. ‘Awater’ has been published several times in English, most recently by Anvil Press Poetry in a dedicated volume with essays, the original and three English versions. 




The excerpt from ‘Awater’ first published in Awater, Anvil Press Poetry, London, 2010.
http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780856464072
‘The Dancer’ and ‘The Third Land’ first published on The High Window, 2017 https://thehighwindowpress.com/ 


All originals in M. Nijhoff, Verzamelde gedichten, Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 2001.

---

---