POETIC DUTCH SHADES

Vitruvian Man created by Leonardo da Vinci is a design, where a man in two overlapped positions (with arms and legs spread wide), is inscribed in a circle and a square. https://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/history/leonardo.html Throughout the centuries, that image has become a cultural icon. Perfectly proportioned, the symmetry of the human anatomy is correlated with the symmetry of the universe. That man is you, inside your existential experience, where you breathe and see, hear, eat and feel it, also reading Dutch poems.

THE OLD LADY – Poem by Martinus Nijhoff

I went to Bommel just to see the bridge. I saw the new bridge. Two opposing shores that shunned each other seemingly before, are neighbours once again. A grassy verge I lay on, tea consumed, for some ten minutes, my head filled with the landscape far and wide, when from that endlessness on every side, this voice came, and my ears resounded with it.

YONDER – Poem by Herman de Coninck

I seek a village. And in it a house. And in it a room, in which there’s a bed, in which there’s a woman. And in that woman a womb. Outside the window the river swells for a long journey, the silver-scaled, fish-holding, boat-bearing, sea-seeking, here-staying one.

I ONCE SAT QUIETLY AND READ – Poem by Herman Gorter

I once sat quietly and read, the books were like tombs for the dead before me, I knew just what was in each plot. My body sat there inside, tree branches crossed panes outside, bored me and crept to and fro, green leaves gained an ochre glow. Amazed, to the daylight my eyes turned, but couldn’t surmise themselves what it was or how it struck their light surface now. Oh, then how my poor heart hungered, and so trembled and hankered, so dry and it would not rain and each day passed in vain. I sat in those days of light, my heart raced in endless flight, I sat using my eyes and head it all seemed like tombs for the dead.