From the Flemish of Gaston Burssens

by Gaston Burssens

English, Dutch (translation)

21 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Gaston Karel Mathilde Burssens was een Belgisch expressionistische dichter.

Gaston Burssens in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia

Gaston Burssens in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

Gaston Burssens bij "Schrijversgewijs"

Gaston Charles Burssens Mathilde was a Belgian expressionist poet.

Gaston Burssens in the English Wikipedia

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Nightly there hangs
a gentleness that is not tangible
far from the nightly groping of our eyes
while probing the darkness

For our gentleness was never unending
and God be praised never without sin
the dear lies and the true ones stood
entangled like hopeless seaweed
became a truth — one that crawled
within the seaweed of hopeless hope

Where green hope and black seaweed
are disentangled and rigid
for reasons of greater embellishment

Where all hope was dispelled with gentleness
we are patients of a diseased life
now and forever given up as useless”
—
“This is the last passion of autumn
as he flames himself in the flamboyance of the autumn
that wave — perhaps as we wave goodbye —
and rise
then rise in their own glow
in their own flood and glow
once more
once more to flame ourselves

At the pond's edge the ducks are duck-still
because the steps we take are aimless
and our shadows cannot put out the flame
that circles the pond

This is the last passion of us all
and still as ducks we stay at the edge
because the flame cannot kindle our shadows”
—
“This is, so be it, the last note
that I shall,
will,
can,
play
in the last life that I live,
on the last keys of my body.
An instrument hard as a safe
from which I have squandered the craziest pennies,
from which I have pulverized the most expensive spider webs.
The dust has stuck to my bones.
It will be buried with me.
The worms will not eat it,
the poison is only intended for me.
I can, I could know
that each beautiful song decorates itself with a conclusion,
as each conclusion decorates itself with a prayer after eating,
and that this end, now or never,
must be called beginning.”