poetic license

Before this blog, I have maintained Muddy roads & dusty trails and Tony Mafia, the painter. It's time for something new and different: Miscellaneous poetics & poetic license in as many languages as I can manage, short essays about translation of poetry, reports about events & presentations. Also places, beauty, thoughts, reading notes, poems, pictures, people's portraits, writers in prison, criticism, presentations of interesting projects e. a. Let's go, let's write, let's read. By the way a good dribble, a nice pass, power and flying with a ball on a foot has its own poetic beauty.

Liu Xiaobo (2009) writes … A Little Mouse in Prison, a poem by Liu Xiaobo, a writer in prison, whose chair is empty at the meetings of Pen Flanders.

A little mouse crawled through the iron bars
And paced nervously on my windowsill.
The worn walls watched him
The mosquitoes full of blood watched him.
He drew even heaven’s silver light
And seemed to fly.
This kind of beauty is rare.

Tonight, the mouse is a dapper gentleman.
Not eating.
Nor drinking.
Nor aimlessly chattering.
His wide-eyed stare is that of a traitor as
He walks in the moonlight.

Een kleine muis in de gevangenis
Liu Xiaobo
Een kleine muis kroop tussen de ijzeren tralies
liep nerveus heen en weer op mijn vensterbank.
De versleten muren bekeken hem
De muggen vol bloed bekeken hem.
Hij lokte zelfs het hemels zilveren licht
en leek in vlucht.
Dit soort schoonheid zie je zelden.

Vanavond is de muis een parmantige heer
Eet niet.
Drinkt niet.
Kletst niet nodeloos.
Zijn verbaasd staren is dat van een verrader zoals
Hij loopt in het ondermaanse licht.