Menno Wigman 
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Translated by David Colmer

Misunderstanding


This will not be an upbeat poem. And why
I’d even let this secret slip’s a mystery to me,
but more and more these last few months, I’ve felt
that poetry is not a form of charity, but more
a sickness that afflicts a coterie of fools,


a sly complaint that mostly bores the rest,
and in the night – it’s not a healing art.
The room remains a room, the bed a bed.
My life’s been wrecked by poetry and though
I once had certain hopes, it won’t go to my head


if I, with these few sheets, disturb the peace of mind
of sixty-seven readers or, worse, bring down two trees.




In Conclusion

I know the melancholy of copy centres,
  of hollow men with yellowed papers,
bespectacled mothers with new addresses,


the smell of letters, of old bank statements,
  of income tax returns and tenancy agreements,
demeaning ink that says that we exist.


And I have seen new suburbs, fresh and dead,
  where people do their best to seem like people,
the street a fair impression of a street.


Who are they copying? Who am I?
  A father, mother, world, some DNA,
you stand there with that shining name of yours,


your head crammed full of cribbed and clever hopes
  of peace, promotion, kids and piles of cash.
And I’m a dog that’s kennelled in its cantos


and howls for something new, something to say.
  Light. Heaven. Love and death. Decay.
I know the melancholy of copy centres.




Promesse de bonheur

Me in her bed and her stepping out of the shower.
The way she goes through to the kitchen naked
is how my days will go from here on in.


She hums a song and I am quickened in her bed.
Infinitely awake, she is, and warm and soft and proud,
and beautiful, so beautiful I can’t say how.


It is a love that must. A miracle which will.
And everything I’ve ever longed for in a body
is there before my eyes completely naked,


naked and mine. The room’s still panting – lustful and wooden.
The curl of her mouth, her strong and lofty mouth that’s made
for lips and pleasure, the curl of her mouth looks good.

Menno Wigman (b. 1966) is one of the most respected and popular poets of his generation, attracting a wide audience for his books and readings. A former poet laureate of Amsterdam, Wigman is also active as a musician (in the 1980s he was a drummer in various punk bands), an editor and a translator. He has published five full-length collections, and won a number of prestigious prizes. Window-Cleaner Sees Paintings, an English selection of his work, was published in 2016.


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From Window-Cleaner Sees Paintings, Arc, Todmorden, 2016
https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/menno-wigman-window-cleaner-sees-paintings-554

The originals of ‘Misunderstanding’ and ‘In Conclusion’ are in De droefenis van copyrettes, Prometheus, Amsterdam, 2009.
​
The original of ‘Promesse de bonheur’ is in Mijn naam is Legioen, Prometheus, Amsterdam, 2012.

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