How would she awaken there . . . — Web Exclusive
By Remco Campert
Translated by Nora Delaney
I spoke of the red of specters,
but dreamed how the woman,
enveloped in a white sheet,
sailed slowly downward, past
my window that morning.
What carried her?
She sailed to the garden—
an earth of dead grass and eggshells,
unmurmuring shells, the tracks
of cats and weary children.
She sailed and softly was taken
by the scantiness of death.
Perhaps murder was to blame,
but already forgiven and forgotten
as the air soundlessly carried
her down to the garden.
For in dreams we are all equally
guilty—murderer and victim.
How would she awaken there
between the yellow grasses of oblivion?
A dead one living among the dead,
ears no longer hearing life,
a vacant smile, cold lips,
still fought over by friend and stranger.
How would she awaken there,
fallen out of life as if from
a warm, unsleeping bed?
Life, she might say, if she could
speak—life-life-life—and then
forever forever forgetting.
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Remco Campert is one of the Netherlands' best-known poets. Widely published in France, Italy and Germany, he is a prolific writer and the recipient of many awards.
Nora Delaney is a writing instructor and Dutch-English translator living in Boston. Her poetry, essays, and translations have been published in Fulcrum, Little Star, Literary Imagination, The Critical Flame, Jacket, Dark Sky Magazine, Absinthe: New European Writing, and other publications.
Original text: Remco Campert, Dichter. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1995.