Poem
Kim Moore
Translation
Vertaling
Hebben we niet allemaal een Echo in ons, onze stemmen ontvreemd,kunnen we alleen herhalen wat allang gezegd is:
jij dwong me het te doen zegt hij en wij roepen terug doe ’t dan, doe ‘t dan.
Zouden we niet allemaal, ertoe gedwongen, de oever opzoeken
en de slangen uit ons haar kammen, of denken dat we in ons verdriet
een zeevogel konden worden, ons uitgestrekte lichaam
als een kruis genageld aan de wind? Wie van ons
heeft niet schrijlings op een man gezeten die meer stier dan man was
terwijl hij in het stof knielde, zonder duidelijk aanwijsbare reden?
Er was een tijd dat ik vertaald werd door geweld,
er waren tijden dat ik bad veranderd te worden in een bloem
of een boom, iets waarin hij mij niet zou herkennen.
© Vertaling: 2015, Willem Groenewegen
Translation
Don’t we all have a little Echo in us, our voices stolen,only able to repeat what has already been said:
you made me do it he says and we call back do it, do it.
Wouldn’t any of us, if pushed, sit on the riverbank
and comb snakes from our hair, or think that in our grief
we could become a sea bird, our outstretched bodies
like a cross nailed to the wind? Who amongst us
hasn’t sat astride a man more bull than man
as he knelt in the dirt, for no good reason we can speak of?
There was a time when I was translated by violence,
there were times I prayed to be turned into a flower
or a tree, something he wouldn’t recognise as me.
© 2015, Kim Moore
From: The Art of Falling
Publisher: Seren Books, Bridgend
From: The Art of Falling
Publisher: Seren Books, Bridgend
Kim Moore
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1981)
Kim Moore was born in Leicester and moved to Cumbria in 2004, where she now lives and works as a poet and a peripatetic brass teacher. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011, and in 2012, If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in The Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy. Moore won a New Writing North Award in 2014, and her first full collection, The Art of Falling,...
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Translation
Don’t we all have a little Echo in us, our voices stolen,only able to repeat what has already been said:
you made me do it he says and we call back do it, do it.
Wouldn’t any of us, if pushed, sit on the riverbank
and comb snakes from our hair, or think that in our grief
we could become a sea bird, our outstretched bodies
like a cross nailed to the wind? Who amongst us
hasn’t sat astride a man more bull than man
as he knelt in the dirt, for no good reason we can speak of?
There was a time when I was translated by violence,
there were times I prayed to be turned into a flower
or a tree, something he wouldn’t recognise as me.
From: The Art of Falling
Translation
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