Oer moderne poëzy
It fers fan de geast yn aksje om te finen
Wat foldocht. It hat net altyd sykje hoegd:
De setting wie bepaald; it werhelle wat
Yn it skript stie.
Doe waard it toaniel feroare
Yn wat oars. Syn ferline wie in oantinken.
It moat libben wêze, it praten fan it plak leare.
It moat de manlju fan no temjitte gean en de froulju
Fan no moetsje. It moat neitinke oer oarloch
En útfine wat foldocht. It moat in nij poadium
Bouwe. It moat op dat poadium stean
En as in net te sêdzjen akteur, stadich en
Mei oerlis, wurden sprekke dy’t yn it ear,
Yn it fynsinnichste ear fan de geast, sekuer
Werhelje wat it hearre wol, mei de klank
Dy’t in ûnsichtber publyk harkje lit,
Net nei it toanielstik mar nei himsels, útdrukt
Yn in emoasje as fan twa minsken, as fan twa
Emoasjes dy’t ien wurde. De akteur is
In metafysikus yn it tsjuster, dy’t in ynstrumint
Puont, in metalen snaar puont, klanken
Meitsjend dy’t trochlitte wat ynienen kloppet
En de geast, dêr’t it net ûnder ôfdale kin en
Net boppe útstige wol, folslein omfiemje.
It moat
It finen fan in foldwaning wêze en kin gean
Oer in man op redens, in frou dy’t dûnset, in frou
Dy’t har hier kjimt. It fers fan de geast as aktor.
Of Modern Poetry
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.
Ut Parts of a World, 1942
