Poems by Tsead Bruinja in English Translation

Poems by Tsead Bruinja in English translation

my love nobody knows how in earlier lives - from De wizers yn it read (Bornmeer)
CELLAR - from De wizers yn it read (Bornmeer)
BRIDGEMASTER - from De man dy't rinne moat (Bornmeer)
QUOTE I - unpublished
GRASS THAT'S ALREADY LAUGHING - from Dream yn in blauwe reinjas (Bornmeer & Contact)
GOOSE - published in Friesland Post and LAVA
BUYING APPLES - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
corrugated roofs mossy roofs - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
night was a weapon - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
RED THROUGH - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
I said I see the rose - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
never is anything - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)
TONGUE - from Dat het zo hoorde (Contact)

Translations of his Frisian poetry by David Colmer
Translations of his Dutch poetry by Willem M. Groenewegen

my love nobody knows how in earlier lives
we passed each other by in the street or just missed the bus
in which one of us sat or in which you were my sister my mother
and we weren't meant to meet because

of differences in age or beliefs maybe the space
between us was as concrete as a continent once
perhaps I was busy discovering ways
of starting a fire while you and your lover

were lighting candles on the other side of the ocean
am I holding you too tightly I'm sorry I don't want to crush
you but am happy and sad at the same time

that there will never be more between us
than this universe in which we cannot come together
because it is too small for the grief of two becoming one

my love let time prise us apart when one by one we die
in this life we'll retaliate with bridges of words

back to the top

CELLAR

when she hears the hand on the handle behind her
the spring in the cellar door stretches the blue
mouthful of meths splashes back in the plastic
belly of the bottle still not mixed with her spit

her heart falls again her face blushes red
she screws the lid tight and wipes the wrinkled
back of her left hand over her mouth and only
starts to breathe in the gentle eyes of her daughter

who sent her boyfriend home with a last kiss
and missed her mother in the chair the black
lid of the stove heavy cast-iron unused

warmth probing the awareness of her fingers
a cautious creaking on the cellar stairs mother
is still up she thought and goes there

BRIDGEMASTER

no total stranger she who brought the news
of your impending death I thought
I'll sing then sing to salvage all
the things I know as yours before

the gates of hell I take the book
of forgetting on my lap and start
to fish you up from this dead script
more foreign still than any tongue

just like the time you tried to pull me out
of a hole in the ice under a bridge
panicked and ended in the drink yourself
I can't escape this song

come father strap my skates on now
I've almost got my boyhood wellies on
come strap my skates on now
the ice is thin like your exhausted face
you stare at me through watering eyes
rise up from that thick woollen grave
and strap on my skates
the water will see us fly above it

mother brought us happy to the shore
where our first trip began with her
in our thoughts over transparent black
over careful watch out snags sticking up

frozen bream fish fingers I joked
trying to break the ice with
childish humour with childish hands
but you were with your wife sick at home

and almost in your place of birth the farms
blanketed winter-white over dumbstruck
grass green grass which once had known
the soft soles of the feet that now

alone with me without a girl raced over sad water
better than anyone else even mother
these ditches and fields knew you
this village with its churchyard full of familiar faces

the golden cock the sharp steeple
close to the farm where you
taught yourself shortwave and snare drum
where your father saw you galloping

no saddle bareback on the horse
the spade cut the ground early for him
who leant me his name three times
when I was too young to be called a father

come and strap on my skates
I've got the tight green wellies on
strap on my skates
the ice is thin as the temporary distance between us
now that I can look at you dry-eyed across the line
strap my skates on one last time
or climb once more into the pen
and let the paper see us flying racing
howling over ice

tell me again about the time you kicked
your music teacher who'd hit you hard
and gutless on the ear with a bunch of keys
right between the legs a so-called fainting fit

refused point-blank to apologise
authorities always pissed you off
at home where between the crooked and the straight
you ploughed your own deep path of pity

heavy as stone the lack of forgiveness balled
in your gut when you couldn't wear the cross
round your neck and your mother no longer
had a heavenly home to wait for you in

strap on my skates father
this world is what's real
between her and me you were the bridgemaster
summer has set in now my skates
are greased in the cellar
before us whirligig beetles dance on the water
the water is blue like slate
so beautiful so dark

back to the top

QUOTE I

hand you do too little
the fire that waits knows that
the work undone knows that
hand

the grain of sand under summer's foot
the flake of snow in the child's hand
the dry heart in the frightened body
the temporary in the temporary
which I thought required
a human hand

hand you don't take me seriously
and do everything by halves
except pain then you're like coral
then you stab like stone

hand why isn't that name
the other on your back
when my story is in your belly

summer's foot in the grain of sand
child's hand in the flake of snow
the temporary as a disease in the bulging
eye of god that cracks
and squeezes
squeezes squeezes and cracks
feels out a place seeks and dies

hand you do too little
and everything you do is like sex
it grows and every day seems more
familiar it lowers a curtain

when a hand does so
so hand
hand

back to the top

GRASS THAT'S ALREADY LAUGHING

each word I lay down before you
on the ground and at your feet
is a word too many

the cold grass beneath
fresh mown just wet
by the moon
it lies a day

now waiting for the sun
a hand covering its mouth
a hand hiding the joke

waiting for how

fresh mown grass
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilaughs

looks at me
sits up
iiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiilaughs laughs laughs

each word
iiiiiiiitrue word laughs
laughs
iiiiiI delight

like a bed you have to
make

laughs
iiiiiiiifresh
mown and smooth

fresh mown and glad
the grass laughsiiiiiiiiwith a hand
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiover its mouth

and each word I later apparently gently
lay down before you on the new grass at your precious feet
is a word too many that laughs and will laugh

back to the top

GOOSE

hare in the field thinks
the hare is all finished
the hare is all gone like
geese flying over winter

hunters' eyes say summer
and the hunter is all finished
the hunter is all
gone like summer

the hunter is all green
the hare in the hunter calls
and the hare is all finished

the field in the field thinks shot
and the field is all finished

most of all the hare is finished
in the field and in the hunter

back to the top

BUYING APPLES

sadness ripe and crumbling mirrors her

in the market salesman's trays

delicate is she who loves apples

he sees that he sees her stubbornly

laughing about his sweet-n-sour jokes

he'd like to draw his jack-knife now

and show her both the rough pip halves

she's doubtful for what seems a fruitless hour

in the nick of time she catches the last bus

when she goes off to the dancehall

she bears a basket laden with red cheeks

there on her sun-coloured arms

lean the childmen begging

to take waterfruit to roofhouse roof

but she goes there to dance

when she goes there

she goes there to dance

when she's there everything starts to dance

a little gospel squeal may sail across

from the south of tobacco faraway america

my lockhips want to sway

attempt her emptiness

until I am broken by dawn

and she is asleep beside me again

back to the top

corrugated roofs mossy roofs with bleaching laundry sheets and wet pegs dancing in wind a human hand or head nowhere to be seen but there are stainless steel chimney-pots orange-red tiles with something black rain discarded running top to bottom doors open curtains shut the clean washing hanging out and branches grow grabbing for something to unsettle stone walls within which he's thinking swimming pools leering at bathing suits and drinking after coffee swimming pools peeping over the tops of locker rooms ghetto blasters sounded like concrete four-lane highways boys' voices driving under them he can hear it but she pulls at what he keeps behind his teeth-grate and makes his lame tongue run back to the town where toss-n-turn-nights-long he lies awake thirsting

knife in the belly of a hungry god

back to the top

night was a weapon that brought us together

growling browns buzzing whites

holy grey burning in desert looks

we grabbed for tough infected tools

the moon was a clock behind swaying trees

the moon was a test card they could dream

she pushes sea out before her they say

she mixes swelter with storm they say

we took up positions I heard

breathing history rustle through instruments

invisible radio operators sending reports under the skin

they remained budding answers to blaring needs

we went deeper

deeper

if you look at snow for long enough your house will fly

if you listen to static for long enough you will believe

that there's something alive down there deeper

deeper

we took up positions

like white pearls our bodies shot through the water

RED THROUGH

(Langston Hughes - 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers')

she lets red run

through nine lives of personal revolution

letting red in tone but even so

the red of setting sun behind the red

the red of dead old brick factory baked red

for her age starts to count after death

red minced through the spokes of a lady's bike

I've read how it runs across the green of her

muddy forelands onto white paper

dries to a black wafer-thin crust

she has shown me red

with words of deep dark flowing

red

back to the top

I said I see the rose

as a wreck

under construction

she swayed from the chandeliers

above the creamy tartlets

with a fork I prodded the pastry

on all sides

being the vessel of discontent I am

amble-heart included that for two days now

has lost its sense of place

and there's me thinking

I let her go but not without

a struggle not a letter faltered from my lips

all I did was stutter smoke

then she said bye I love you

I called out loudly to the plastic ivory

bye bye phone

never is anything so far forgotten

that it can't be thought of ever after

when memory languishes vanishes

imagination comes and paints her laughter

I know not what she said when she

kissed me last the way she spoke

but sleep who is the brother

of death lifted my gloomy

mood to an ode

to the former

after which I slept broke and forgot

it concerns trees and rocks

it concerns which dress she wears

when she dances

at the last kiss

a flight of tongues

her dress was night

after which I slept broke and forgot

back to the top

TONGUE

what I wish

a lucid heart

for a darkened night

ears that stop crying

listen to the drowsy boat

song that once again

reaches lips

there is a train singing its way

through this muddy landscape

through this grey sky

there is a train singing

on either side

of the traversed

the heap

of white feathers

steadily growing

tongue what is your profession

reed in saxophone mouth

doubtful heart in red torso wound

tango living in blood-head

tongue what is your profession

tongue tell me distance is form

tongue remove

back to the top