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A poem by Paul van Ostaijen translated by Joshua Weiner


Paul van Ostaijen: Village, 1928

…………………..a version

 

In the night, a bat

your breath 

doesn’t depend on the breath of another

and you know this place

the people, house to house, at night

by a single light—the pastor’s, perchance—

and a tardy cow on the way

in the wedge cut by path and stream

empty, like the village

like a boat anchored

briefly

 

Dark water smacks

the jetty

measured

and stranger 

than a screamless

murder

 

You know there is no face

you can enter

as you enter your own house

 

And everywhere you go you only fumble at the surface of things

a mirror of your loneliness

measure 

of your brief journey

 

 


Het dorp Paul van Ostaijen

 

Een vleermuis aan de nacht

hangt niet uw adem aan een vreemde adem 

zo gij dit beseft het dorp

en de mensen nachtlijk huis aan huis

één licht – wellicht bij den pastoor – 

en langs uw weg een late koe

In de wig van weg en stroom

is van de leegte zo het dorp

alsof ‘t een boot was die maar voor korte tijd

op anker ligt

 

Om het staketsel kletst

het donkere water

gemeten

en vreemder dan een moorden zonder gil

  

Gij weet dat er geen gelaat is

daar gij binnen kunt

als in uw huis

  

En gij stoot overal der dingen oppervlak 

een spiegel van uw eenzaamheid 

een teller van uw korte reis

 


Paul van Ostaijen (1896 – 1928) was a Belgian Dutch-language poet.  Influenced by and involved with the major modernist art movements in Europe, from Expressionism through Dadaism, van Ostaijen also wrote art criticism and literary essays, ran an art gallery, and contributed to the development of a ‘pure poetry’ aesthetic that tried to answer the problems of poetry’s radical subjectivity.

Joshua Weiner’s most recent book of poems is The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (Chicago).  His translation of Nelly Sachs’ 1959 volume, Flight and Metamorphosis, was published by Farrar Straus Giroux in 2022.  A prose account of the refugee situation in Germany, Berlin Notebook: Where Are the Refugees? was published by LARB in 2016 and funded by a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.  He teaches at University of Maryland and lives in Washington D.C.


22 March 2022



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