Poem

Nyk de Vries

Side by side

LOIS LESTER

I met Lois Lester in 1956 and realised immediately that he was a strange character. We were walking through Chinatown when he pulled out a dagger and plunged it straight into his stomach. He wasn’t dead, but we had to rush to hospital like mad things. There I spent almost the entire evening talking to Sister Anna and hardly a fortnight later we were married. What else is there to say? Why wait any longer for the one you love when she’s sitting right next to you?

LOIS LESTER

Ik ontmoette Lois Lester in 1956 en meteen begreep ik dat het een vreemde snuiter was. We liepen door het Chinese deel van de stad toen hij een dolk te voorschijn trok en die recht in zijn buik plaatste. Hij was niet dood, maar we moesten wel als gekken naar het ziekenhuis. Daar sprak ik bijna de hele avond met zuster Anna en amper twee weken later waren we getrouwd. Wat kan ik er verder over zeggen? Waarom langer wachten op je liefje als ze gewoon naast je zit?

Nyk de Vries

(The Netherlands, 1971)

Nyk de Vries is a poet, novelist, and musician. He was born in Noardburgum in Friesland and studied history at Groningen University. At present he works and lives in Amsterdam. His novels Rozijnkonijn and Prospero came out in the early 2000s, and although de Vries hardly sat still during those years, it was over 10 years until his next novel, Renger, was published by De Arbeiderspers in 2015. R...