NACHOEM WIJNBERG

Translated from the Dutch by Andrew Duncan and Karlien van den Beukel




COMEDY

Every time she sees the husband she faints.
The husband keeps on knocking down the lover with one punch.
At night the sleepless husband sits at a table,
in striped pyjamas, an almost empty glass of brandy in front of him.

She meets the lover on hard grass, against a hill
near a rundown zoo; apes between the excrement
and ice cream wrappers, bears with their pelts full of dust,
deer and wild horses, slowly breathing and lying on their side.



MESSAGEFEAST DAY

What is needed:
is a rest day that is a feast day.

What is needed,
is as far away as toys.

What is not needed:
is an invitation to an immediate feast day,

as in: ‘We are gathered together for a feast day
and it is getting late.’





IS THERE TIME?

Not to recognise
as a wish,
waiting (hiding)
until the evening (the rain)
demonstrates 
that it doesn’t stop that evening
from listening within itself
to what must be heard again
(is there time?) to be recognised
as overwhelmingly
wished for (wanting to snatch it out of the air).




DAY OFF


A judge says: codes of conduct are as helpful
as splendid music, in the best case,
and as competitions and elections are helpful.
So difficult to sympathise with more than one at once
but a winner in the morning and a loser in the evening
is at least possible, and perhaps practising 
with music that moves in two directions at once.

A judge says: I ought not to simplify
and I attend to my incomprehension from the moment of waking up
on a sentencing day and I don’t listen to him
who presents himself as intelligible
and calls any number of witnesses to that purpose.

A judge says: dignity is what I could cry about
when it occurs or when it breaks down
or in a face that keeps on holding back its tears
or drunk with dignity shouts against the wind.

A judge says: I cannot remember a deed
or assume hidden reasons for a deed 
or consider a deed unintentional
- a stone, a part of an empty landscape –
or I cannot let the doer out of my thoughts for one moment
but consider him as my landscape
and my only guide out of it.

A judge says: music heightens sympathy
at least for as long as it lasts,
competitions and elections are also helpful
and suit free days, until no one liberated
worries about an outcome, but celebrates his day with his own dignity.



SIR PLAYING SIR

Sir wants to play sir?
That doesn’t mean he has to burst into tears. 

That lady is tired, 
That’s why she’s lying on her back in the shallow water

only half washing over her,
and that lady further on is running through the waves.

The white in the sky is not snow
but foam, water mixed with sky.

Sometimes a lady wakes up in the sea-foam,
sometimes a lady goes to sleep in it.

That lady is jumping up and down.
Look, those ladies,

The bigger they are the better
and the better they find sir.

When the biggest one embraces him
the sun disappears behind her.




BIRD MODEL

We’re deciding whether to try out all the proposals first, carefully, on apes.

Soldiers approach the city and they ask us 
to surrender.
They promise not to kill us if we say yes.

There are so many dead lying in the streets that a walker
must step on bodies.

With apes there are more possibilities
than for example with birds.

What we need is good advice about which model to choose,
not a bird model.

Please.

Some claim it’s unclear
what should happen to the apes afterwards.

What do you want to be able to do, how do you want to 
be able to save yourself?

When you look around you.

Can you explain to me what you are doing here?
And what happens when you’re mistaken?

From this point to this point you can say you’re smart;
I’ve forgotten who told me that,
although I’m becoming even more convinced it’s like that.

What the large and dark dogs do to a passerby,
usually,
and what they do to a man whose hand is stuck.

Start a conversation,
go on again and somewhere,
on a platform or on a path between two meadows,
thinking (as if you’re prepared to imagine that a voice
is speaking to you) that you must turn back.

Harvested fields sloping toward a small town;
come to a standstill, and continue walking.
Hundreds of birds land in the middle of a field
and rise up again, almost immediately.

I wouldn’t know how an honest man could ever be
ridiculous, although others say they’ve seen them 
walking by, the one after the other,

one step at a time back along the indicated road.

Torn up leaves, the one after the other.

As if it was discovered that a mistake had been made,
that you haven’t got the disease
but that you go back to help care for those who’d waved you goodbye,
help them wash themselves in a bath full of foam.

Because noise is coming out of the dark,
you’re alert,
until you hear it’s regular. 

You talk to an ill, then later dead, dog
as practice for talking to those without whom you are scared
that your talking to yourself

will begin to move backwards and forwards,
as if asked who, if you could rescue one or the other,
you would rescue,

bring presents for, a blue shirt, a pair of socks,

would arrange to see again
when nothing can be done anymore, when no one dares 
look.

How do you measure the consequence of a choice
so that after that it counts
in the conversation between the wall and the presents?

They are like us but pretend that they are more
or quite the reverse or are envoys

or the owners of everything we have
who once fled or left to go elsewhere.

Let the soldiers prepare themselves, the bricklayers,
the jewellers.
Read old recommendations!

Any moment the conversation could end.

We attempt to satisfy them
or lure them into a trap so that they must

forever demonstrate what they want
so that those who would want to imitate them would learn as little as possible from it. 


Please don’t feed the animals.

We have to confer quickly and decide
before we have to say: by what right

are we abandoned by that which was
always in our minds.

High in a town, yours or not yours,
in which you don’t have to be able to save yourself.

In which it would be pleasant.

To save.

Around the town
soldiers looking
for places to sleep,
cursing drums,
cursing soft flute sounds,
cursing silence.

How is the town supposed to surrender? 


IT’S STILL YOURS, EVEN IF I TAKE IT BACK NOW


I remember a time when I was running across the beach.
I was running to and fro and only my own footprints were in the sand.
I kept on running; I didn’t get tired.

A good table, far away from Siberia.

I am very good at appropriating another’s
memories, later realising that all the time,
like an undressed person says to their undresser
that it was yours all the time.

I open a bottle of champagne, a better bottle this time,
and apologise again.

My arm is gripped by someone  afraid
for his memories.
What am I supposed to do with the memories of a stranger
without which he cannot go on?

What use are those beautiful memories;
they’ve become worthless!
				He says,
as if he could put them out with the rubbish.

This finishes with the entry of those dressed up as memories
bowing left and right.
			A final performance
and the takings are for them alone.

Come have a look, aren’t they sweet? 

I’ve drunk champagne before in my life,
arms holding the glasses entwined so that I didn’t know
from which glass.

With what aim?
To make what recovery more difficult?

		An old picture
of a busy street where I too was walking,
have a look to see if I’m in it,

if my face is not looking at me. Look,
that was me, that you now know for sure what happened to me after that
is why you look at this photo for so long.

Take time to stand in a line

and look back through the line
as if the openings for the eyes remain at the same place
and the bodies can be turned and stretched
until all the openings come together,

the beginning never as convincing as the conclusion,
as in, but I was speaking to him only yesterday. 

Look, as in a picture, and my face
is not in it anymore.

I bought a box of chocolates,
the first thing I bought in a shop,

and I paid with coins which I had picked up from the street.
On the way home I dropped the box
and the person I gave it to didn’t say anything about the squashed chocolates.

I wanted some shoes that I had seen.
Those who gave me money thought they were too expensive.
When I got on the bus home I forgot the box
and when I went back to the stop, it had gone.

I was immediately given money for a new pair.

I received a gift.
It was exactly what I wanted.
All that I could have told
and why I was asked, I was going to tell.

If I had had more of them, I could have opened a gift shop
and if I’d known someone who would have waited the whole
day in the shop for a customer like me

whilst outside sick children scream with pain 
from the warmth and light.

the grass in the garden is shrivelling but to throw water 
over it now would have made it burn.

Another gift that I had forgotten to give myself
not even that I decided I should do without it.

How does the skin feel today,
as amazing nakedness?

We know each other so it doesn’t matter at all.

You needn’t have asked,
it was yours all the time?




DON’T BREATHE NOW

To discover now
whether the maps are right
whether it is
possible to live
in monotonous longing,

looking at the waves,
looking at the coast lines,
following with a finger on the map,

floundering on the solidified sea.

Now turn back.
It’s not a single ship approaching
but a fleet, closing off the horizon, toward the open coast.

Those who took part, those who bought shares, shouldn’t fear anymore
those who were worried about what could be missing from the fleet

shouldn’t fear anymore,

can now rest buoyant on time 
instead of standing with fear as an amulet
in their clenched fists.

They find a piece of olive wood
on the beach in which there appears to be a face,

bring it to him who releases limbs
from statues, the legs apart from each other
as in walking and the arms and hands outstretched,
and the open eyes in the eye sockets. 

He is just busy binding the statues 
of longing to chairs.

Is this the face of justice,
who doesn’t have to justify his deeds,
not even with further deeds?

Who also doesn’t have to be sprinkled with water,
the eyes and lips moistened.

Now the thought that isn’t preparation or judgement
but plucked loose
flower-arranged a little.

Against irreparability forgiveness,
against insecurity promises
of forgiveness.

The retreating sea. 



DON’T WANT TO SEE IT


Proving by bringing it into balance,


sacrificing what agrees to be.
For a long time no rain falls, trees perish in dry wind.

Sacrifice to make up for it, understand proof,
prove understanding,
			and when it cannot be made good,
when what shouldn’t have happened happened, sacrifice that shouldn’t have been offered
has been offered and seen,

then never to return to the proof enclosed by gardens,

the gardens enclosed by walls of proof

		in which rain falls until the walls

overflow and collapse.




THE END OF WAITING

A light in the night
answers 
another light,
answers 

another light
that says: someone
is returning to a palace
in which a woman

is lying next to someone
as tired next to tired;
in another palace
softness lies which doesn’t

flee from fingers
but lets fingers be and says:
in me as in air
and no more death for death.



NOT LIKE A BIRD

In women are
smaller women,
sometimes larger women
and even larger women in those women.

The men
show those who can’t
by acting as if they almost cannot:
sit still between the shadows.

They show those who can fly,
not like a bird
but like a bird which is taken out 
of a bird and then put back.



HORSE AND BIRD

A horse and a bird agree
to help each other for a long time
whilst they are changing, becoming 
more or less horse and bird.

A horse and a bird agree
to look together at the horse and the bird
that are helping each other and not to point out
where more help may be needed.

Look up: no stars but birds
and on the ground horses being born
with the smell of sea in their nostrils
and competing with the birds.

(Someone had rather that the horse
had disappeared before the bird
so as to be able to talk with the one
when the other was no longer there.)



SERIOUS

He says he will let the person closest to him
decide whether he is serious,
like someone from whom someone has disappeared forever,
or is not serious

now and always again,
when he is young and is old. 
No one says ‘That isn’t easy.’
It’s clear he isn’t just saying it.

He takes a bath,
dries himself, says he will not do
what he said earlier on.
No one says: ‘He doesn’t know what he wants.’