Vertaallab is een serie op Ooteoote die dichters en schrijvers uit andere taalgebieden aan de lezer voorstelt. Elke aflevering minstens één bijvoorkeur nieuw gedicht. Dat u mag vertalen, als u wilt. Graag zelfs, wat ons betreft. Post uw Nederlandse vertaling van onderstaand gedicht als reactie op dit bericht.

 

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The beggar tone and the godman tone: alternations.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxHe worked on his tone
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpoems—

 

Is there more?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI’ll tell you when it’s ready.

 

Right now it’s

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbroken.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*
How the projects should take you into them, like loving sisters such as Heinrike, Ottla, Grete, Clara, Lili. Or their brothers. But maybe they banish you—

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*
But I wasn’t aka I didn’t.

xxxxxxxxxxxxI left part of my name out, then I liked it better.

 

I walked like a dead man, is it because his philosophy is so much more optimistic than mine?

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxOr because I undressed the concept of siblings?

 

My friend Gregory finally answered my letter. Unless that was my brother Grigor.

 

The building novel in amorous letters, the demolishing novel in isolated notes—

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxill morose
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxamorphous
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxall aimless

 

Holden Brent or Hildebrand or Brand Ishmael or Hyper Ian? I could lose my mind over the problem of the I’s identity! How it’s always morphing.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI feel flat. The bad 2-dimensional.

 

Did a yellow taxi flatten me?

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxOn pavement, they can repaint the white lines.

 

I haven’t thought about Jesus even though I ought to.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxI haven’t felt Jesus.

 

He came not to make pieces but with a Hildebrand.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxTo make a pussy!

 

I ascended the staircase. My building is red outside, blue inside, like my mouth. Its gums are blue, its stairs are yellow. Unless its walls are yellow, its teeth are blue. With filled-in cracks.

 

I cannot see into the distance. My chest plate’s broken so I can’t spin it like an LP.

 

Shards lay everywhere.

 

My father wasn’t really. But my brother was. Another was Friedrich.

 

His nails grew long. His teeth were his identity. So they admitted it.

 

In the perambulator she bit the orderlies, using her savant talent.

 

The room grew serious. The laugh fell into the sink.

 

You don’t need a bathtub. You can be frank in the sink. It has worn-out salvaged fixtures.

 

I was still writing to salvage my philosophy qua poetry. But it has rusted and the fragments are weird shapes. The opposite of a puzzle.

 

Furthermore, this notebook isn’t plain.

 

Truthful Notebook!

 

But that’s because it can’t be. It would be arrested.

 

On the first floor, a stranger/neighbor practiced his cello or viola or violin. I, Hildebrand/Holden Brent, am so ignorant that I can’t tell the difference.

 

There’s a pain in my mouth.

 

The milk is sour anyway.

 

Black hole milk. Aesthetics of the whole milk. The other way was pretentious.

 

The head sinks forward, low, the eyelids close. Frankly.

 

The final vinyl? Isn’t that a tic? Like repeating clock? Aka mortality. Or when it seemed she really loved me, in the dark, a prince is a half-king? Or demigod.

 

I wore a soul patch to be Apolo Anton Ohno, although he is half-Japanese, not half-Chinese. Also I wore pads upon my sharp knees and sharper elbows. Skated away on anorexic ice.

 

The sharpness is what will tear the nerve strands.

 

There’s a pain in my arm.

 

Lack of indents suggesting sorrow, weakness, defeat.

 

___

De schrijver en kunstenaar Hildebrand Pam Dick (aka Traver Pam Dick, Mina Pam Dick et al.) woont in New York City. Zij debuteerde als dichter met Delinquent (Futurepoem Books, 2009). Haar prozateksten, filosofische essays, en vertalingen werden eerder gepubliceerd door respectievelijk BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Aufgabe, The Recluse, EOAGH, Fence Magazine, het International Wittgenstein Symposium, Telephone Journal en Dandelion. Op dit moment werkt zij aan een serie die het genre van de dichtbundel ontstijgt en reageert op werk van Hölderlin, Trakl, Bachmann, Lenz, Büchner, Kafka, Walser, en Sophocles: filosofie als literatuur – onderzoek naar een vloeibare identiteit, muziek van wisselende tonaliteiten, een poetica van sex en verwantschap tussen boeken.

Bovenstaand gedicht is een selectie uit het nieuwe werk I wear long hair.