Meeting Benches World art in all forms
Imagine being 40 years old, imagine that your country has been invaded at the beginning of World War II, imagine being on board a ship that takes you over the English Channel, in England, where you can continue to write your poems intense and full of vitality. This was the last trip of Hendrik Marsman, a Dutch poet, who drowned after the torpedoing of the ship that would not have been able to bring to regain Paradise. He left us in the summer solstice of 1940, along with the serenity of one of his works of 1927 (Paradise Regained).
FLAME – by Hendrik Marsman
“Sparkling morning
in my rice of fire
drinking cups of immense
of air and ground
the day opal.”
VIRGO – by Hendrik Marsman
“Lake morning
Margins are your order.
Adergano mountains in the light of pond
and your lips calm, virginal
Neptune streams flickering
the dark green sweet spots
and brightens your eye.
But night falls back into the night
and your mouth is closed in on itself
and your blood is surrounded by your blood.”
INVOCATIO – by Hendrik Marsman
“Let me sleep in the mantles of your hair
and I put your dark around my wild heart,
banishes the light from the valleys of my eyes
and spreads across your window at night.
Because I’m tired and the next day it hit me
with fire and with the wine of her source fails.
My anxiety has petrified keep rose hedges:
are blindly obsessed by the Sun.
Hide my head and let my timid hands,
hidden in the pocket of your dress
can be anchored to the sides of the hills,
where wanders the beat of dusk.
And take my mouth, because his flames scorched
Burn for the shadow of your blood,
irrugiadisci my voice with the splendid Albali
and Gird my eyes with fresh courage.
Let me sleep in the mantle of your hair
And put your dark around my wild heart,
banishes the light from the valleys of my eyes
and spreads across your window at night.”
GOODBYE – by Hendrik Marsman
“Sleep with the dark woman
sleep through the night
our deepest embrace
killed the dream
dark and without compassion
are blood and sex
sleep with the dark woman
sleep through the night.”
PARADISE REGAINED – by Hendrik Marsman
“The sea and the sun in flash shots:
fans of fire and de silk;
along the blue mountains in the morning
the wind passes close to the ground
Like an antelope.
Wandering among fountains of light
And in the streets radiant water,
I have a blonde woman for companion
that along the water sings eternal
carefree a clear melody:
the ship of the wind is ready to travel,
Sun and Moon are white roses,
morning and night, two sailors blue.
We return to Heaven.”
LANDSCAPE – by Hendrik Marsman
“In the meadows graze
The tame animals;
herons sail
above glassy lakes,
the bitterns are
at a pond dark;
and floodplains
galloping horses
with their tails to the wind
waving grass.”
REMEMBERING THE NETHERLANDS – by Hendrik Marsman
“Thinking of Holland
I see wide rivers
scroll slowly
For the endless plains,
rows of poplars
admirably sparse
stand as a feather
high on the horizon
and sunk
in deep space
farms
dispersed through the fields,
and groups of trees, villages,
truncated towers,
churches, elms,
in a grandiose whole,
above the sky is low
and the sun slowly
drowning in the fog
gray iridescent,
and in all regions
the entry of water
with its eternal disasters
felt and feared.”
