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Gerry van der Linden is an established Dutch poet based in Amsterdam. She is the author of two novels, one novella and twelve poetry collections, most recently Niemand blijft het langst (2021). In 2018, she was awarded the ‘Ditet e Naimit’ prize in Tetova, Macedonia, for her international body of poetry. She is currently working on a new poetry collection and a novel, and also works as a teacher and visual artist.
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Michele Hutchison is an acclaimed literary translator from Dutch and French. She moved from the UK to Amsterdam in 2004. Her translation of Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening won the 2020 International Booker Prize. She also won the Vondel Translation Prize (2019) and the Sophie Castille Award (2023). Her own poetry is published by Rack Press.
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NB: The translations have published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
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Gerry van der Linden: Four Poems from Nobody Stays the Longest*
LAST PHOTO OF A LOVED ONE IN BED (1981)
Goodbye my love you’ve disappeared under the grey blanket
on the big bed
you look a bit tired with your pale face
but this was in the past
you hold a fag in your left hand
curly hair in an aureola of smoke
good looking young man in the big bed under a grey blanket
good looking young man with your ashen eyes your waxy body
your fingers made of feathers
eating drinking sleeping making love all in the big bed
the objects in the house are given a place
arranged by you
you love unusual objects
you love me
everything is light everything pink everything black
we laugh until we choke
out of your depth in the water
I walk up and down the canal in a fairy dress
in the darkness of the window
do you lose your tongue like a stoned tourist
the laughter in your throat smothered you smothered
asleep on your back for all eternity
I fly over the ocean in my fairy dress
your body versus gravity
I have thrown off the covers
borne myself into the world
imposed a fairy tale onto myself
walked up and down the canal without a fairy dress
your pale face nowhere to be seen
your sobs nowhere to be heard
no objects anywhere arranged by you
everything has arranged itself
nowhere have I found you
but in the big bed with your pale face
fag in your left hand
your curly hair in an areola of smoke
YOU WON’T WIN WIND
On my bike, doctor Berlagelaan
You won’t win wind
you won’t win because I’ll pedal
you off the road kick you into the ditch
I’ll kick you yonder where you’ll lie in lurch
white knuckles on handlebars
taut calf muscles
I hear you whistling I hear you raging
you don’t scare me wind
I won’t slow down I won’t get off
I cycle towards the horizon
myself on the handlebars myself on the back
myself in the saddlebag
past houses
city transport busses
misted windows
past the house I live in.
IN THE END WE ALL BECOME STORIES
Sometimes I tell myself
that everyone can do without poems
myself included
that boiling a chicken for broth
the pan a night outside and only then
adding the chopped veg
that even the thought of
picking up a spoon
makes your mouth water
at the first slurp
I no longer need any help
don’t need to go to the party
pointlessly saved the invitation
pointlessly washed my hair
curled my blackened lashes
picked out a dress
pointlessly promised to attend
pointlessly thought that it’s just
a party haven’t been
to a party for so long
really should get out of the house
otherwise I’ll never go anywhere
where it might be nice
among others and new others.
EXIT
for the crème de la crème
mea culpa for the other
meandering in front of the straight line
dancing for the lambs
singing for the mutes
shall I ask the animals for advice
they walk away from us they walk to us
they jump up at us they walk past us
we pick up the gun put down the gun
we pick up the gun kill to save our lives
we kill without reason sleep without sleep
we eat without feeding feel without pain
we are the worst sort sacrifice our children
we don’t know why question without questions
we lug without burden kiss hello
we kiss goodbye walk without feet
we hit without a stick stand without legs
are born again die again
we invoke god where are you god where did you get to
we embrace love strike love dead
we embrace love and so on.
NB: Nobody Stays the Longest was published by Nieuw Amsterdam, 2021.
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Gerry van der Linden: Two Poems from ‘Lunch with Brodsky’*
ROTTERDAM, POETRY INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL, 1989
On a windy spot
somewhere in the harbour
the autumnal cry of a hawk
much too early – it was still summer.
His finger pointed at the sky and the clouds
Oh, Dutch skies and Dutch clouds
a prick, he said
(Who? I thought, did he mean me or himself?)
but he’d seen a lance in the sky, looked
like he was being stabbed by it.
We continued walking through the city
the sky and the clouds
the water raged and the dock workers rolled
ropes into O’s
we ate sandwiches, Joseph Brodsky
and me on a Rotterdam quayside
(napkin around his nicotine fingers)
there was a strong wind
that evening in the Doelen his voice
flowed out over the heads of the audience
–ozorstvó, boisterous resistance.
Later he wrote
I regret leaving – you, horizontality, water, prick,
excess of clouds
HOTEL JAN LUYKEN
Amsterdam, 1989
On a king-sized bed – a lot of velvet –
he nestled in like a woman
as though wanting to say: see
I am a man
I remained standing on the carpet, looking
as he wrote somewhere – looking
at what there was to see behind her
Mother Marija polished away the weariness
this hotel room shone with a vengeance
–sons that lay down their mothers and vice versa.
I stood a short distance from the bed, coughed.
He lay on the bedspread, closed his eyes
No, I didn’t move closer, I was
a piece of furniture, the coffee table in the corner
the clothes hanger dangling from the wardrobe.
What to do with this type of condensed time
(the way he defined water and the inverse) – I was
thirsty so was he – jumped up like a bored lion
don’t be like me
We got into the lift and out
the street was empty of daily sounds
I saw how reddish blond his eyelashes
freckles – rusty imprint of droplets.
NB: ‘Lunch with Brodsky’ is a ten-poem cycle.
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The High Window 