I
… is gelukkig niet echt … eg … eg echt weg
Al weet zij er heg noch steg
In haar rode jurk, blauwe jurk
Rood-blauwe bloemenjurk.
Want het stroomt, alles.
Alles stroomt. Volgens de analoog pathonoom
Is de taartpunt de oorsprong van lipogenese.
Lipopotamus in de Po Popotomac.
Het zwaarste beest in een beest van een kist.
Een granieten kist, diep, diep onder het woestijnzand.
Waar het tentdoek klappert in de hete wind.
Salmonella, Salporeum, Peristilium, Peristalticus.
Serapis, Sepaleum, Serapeum. Apis, Apis!
Waar zijt gij Apis?
Uw kolossale sarcofaag is leeg. Hoe!
Hoe kregen ze dat voor elkaar? Hoe?
Meneer de pathograaf, hoe?
“Ik ben autonoom pathograaf. Ex Officio, zogezegd.
Van de Oostelijke Necropool.”
“Dank u. Aangenaam.”
“Insgelijks.”
Lino, linoleums; de zwartste de eerste.
Ik vind het, vind het, want het…
Naar mijn Nederlandse website voor een toelichting.
English translation*
I
… is not really re re really gone, fortunately
Although she is lost
In her red dress, blue dress
Red-blue flowery dress.
Because it all flows, everything.
Everything is in flux. According to the analogous pathonomist
The piece of cake is the origin of lipogenesis.
Lipopotamus in the Po Popotomac.
The heaviest beast in a beastly coffin.
A chest of granite, deep, deep under the sand of the desert.
Where hot winds flap the canvas of the tent.
Salmonella, Salporeum, Peristilium, Peristalticus.
Serapis, Sepaleum, Serapeum. Apis, Apis!
Apis, where art thou?
Your colossal sarcophagus is empty. How!
How did they do it? How?
Mister pathograph, how?
“I am the autonomous pathographer. Ex Officio, so to say.
Of the Eastern Necropolis.”
“Many thanks. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Lino, linoleums; the blackest go first.
I will find it, find it, because it…
—
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* Ok, I’m not really a translator by trade, so probably someone else might do a better job translating my own poems. When I write in English, official documents, or literary text, poems, or haiku’s, I find it much less difficult to find the right words, because they come to me in English. The poem in Dutch is the first of a series of 48 poems that I will post from today on. They consist primarily of associations, colours, moods, that are derived from a period of uneasy sleep in which I became semi-conscious about the idiotic stuff my mind was producing, while at the same time I more or less realised how closely James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ actually approaches dream language. So while floating back and forth between waking and sleeping, at the same time suffering from a bad white wine induced splitting headache, an uncontrollable ‘stream of semi-consciousness’ flowed through my mind. I was standing on the river bank of this stream with a little net, trying to catch some of the jewels that shot past me like small silvery fish. Mostly neologisms, or concatenations of loosely related words, partly repetitive images, talking heads. It was quite fearsome.
This morning I started drafting the first poems in a notebook with 96 pages. I use the recto-side and leave the verso open for notes and clues, hence the 48 poems.
Inspired by the strange phenomenon of “Masquerade” by Kit Williams in the late seventies, I decided to start illustrating this work in progress, and to inoculate the poems with a serum of clues that will eventually lead the person who finds the solution to the location of the Underworld where the likes of Euridice, Orpheus, and Beatrice were lost, and found, and lost. There will be a prize. More details will follow.
See for my Dutch site, freshly started, for an introduction in Dutch.
