Esther Jansma
Poems from Brain Corals, edited and translated from the Dutch by Francis R. Jones, 
forthcoming with Bloodaxe Books (scheduled 2007).

The originals of these five poems first appeared in Jansma’s collection 
Bloem, steen (Flower, Stone, 1990).

 

Bloem, steen (Flower, Stone, 1990).


That she was here and then not here
and what fell in between – tales 
take hold as we retell the told
all through that night, and again –

as streetlight lays branches bare	
in rings, so language lays us out
round nothing – never letting up, 
head to head, foot to foot:
sounds in a flimsy hoop.
 


How can you be in so big a space?
Like a marble in a bowl? I shrink 
back to the edge, look into the eye 
of the moment at which she shatters.

Nowhere hang our portraits now,
strata which once existed, or almost. 
I am stripped, a small bare world
in a water-cold head.
 



I push crystals, chessboards
of gold, gilded arches and bouquets
out of my head – I play at birth again:
I want light to begin not in the light
but before, twist my fingers, furiously	
press sun and more sun into her eyes.

Dying must be her brightest moment: insane
euphoria, fall of a
glass acrobat, 
sun pain.

 


There is a space in my head
of silence made by the dead;
I need to speak.

I seek out the biggest sounds,
call stone, for stone remains itself,	
and flower: flowers show their true colours.

And I want to grasp that silence 
with foot, forever foot,
form fixed in my hand,
with such withered little toes.	
 



The stone seems to be lying still
but is falling to the ground
in which she lies and falls further,
spread ever more thinly: dead 
is embracing earth to the core.	

And we who stand here now 
are taller than ever – however 
downwards we look and sink inside our heads,
living on is being hurled upwards,
falling in reverse, weightless.