Artikel
Poëzie aan de Tour-start
Fiets vers
30 juni 2015
Enkele fragmenten vooraf:
FABLES OF THE SACRED HEART, Dirk van Bastelaere (Belgium)
Those were days of cycling in the mountains. Of climbing, descending.
Of enormous hunger for more and as long as they blocked the peak’s
virginity from view in their groaning scent of resin,
pine trees acted out this problem to excess. But above the
treeline you feel free.
THE BICYCLE THIEF – VITTORIO DE SICA (1948), José Miguel Silva (Portugal)
500 miles per day pedaled my father, from his bed
near the Douro River to the booming ceramicware
plant of Valadares. If all men, from birth,
are given some sixty enemies per hour,
imagine a life cycling to and from a factory.
BICYCLE, Philip Hammial (Australia)
It’s my fifth birthday & I’m sitting on the present that Uncle Stan has just given me, a green Schwinn bicycle. He gives me a push & down I go, down the gentle slope in his back yard in Chicago that becomes a hill, an interminably long hill that, sixty years later, I’m still going down.
BICYCLES IN THE SIXTIES, Sun Wenbo (China)
In my youth—the Cultural Revolution—
the buses roaring through the streets
with Red Guards brandishing guns, tearing down the replicated
Imperial Dam. It was time to “Break the Four Olds”.
I remember leaving home for middle school
two miles away, and saw a young guard in glasses
raised his gun and started shooting porcelain vases
off the power poles.
JUNE ROCK, Yosuke Tanaka (Japan)
Evening in early summer, people are strolling about.
As I ride my bike out of the woods in the park
There’s a man walking in front of the drinking fountain.
Another young man goes down to the base of the bridge
Turns suddenly and goes back up the slope.
Seduced by the humid but pleasant evening breeze,
They’ve all gone outside to while away the time.
‘Dichten is fietsen op de Mont Ventoux’, zegt dichter Jan Kal. Zaterdag 4 juli, start de Tour de France in Utrecht en dat betekent dat het hele stad en zelfs het land geel ziet, of wit met rode stippen. Tour parafernalia overal, en zelfs ook poëzie.
Het Utrechtse Stadsdichtersgilde presenteerde onlangs de bloemlezing met app met de titel Schaduwpeloton. Met gedichten wordt de tourroute door de stad gevolgd. Daarnaast troffen vele bewoners voor deze gelegenheid hun fiets aan voorzien van een fris en passend zadelhoesje. Om ook vanuit hier in Rotterdam ons plekje in het 'schaduwpeloton' in te nemen en zo bij te dragen aan de feestelijkheden zocht Poetry International in het uitgebreide archief naar gedichten over de kunst van het fietsen. Niet voor niets zegt Tourdirecteur Christian Prudhomme: ‘in the Netherlands, the bicycle is king’. Enkele fragmenten vooraf:
FABLES OF THE SACRED HEART, Dirk van Bastelaere (Belgium)
Those were days of cycling in the mountains. Of climbing, descending.
Of enormous hunger for more and as long as they blocked the peak’s
virginity from view in their groaning scent of resin,
pine trees acted out this problem to excess. But above the
treeline you feel free.
THE BICYCLE THIEF – VITTORIO DE SICA (1948), José Miguel Silva (Portugal)
500 miles per day pedaled my father, from his bed
near the Douro River to the booming ceramicware
plant of Valadares. If all men, from birth,
are given some sixty enemies per hour,
imagine a life cycling to and from a factory.
BICYCLE, Philip Hammial (Australia)
It’s my fifth birthday & I’m sitting on the present that Uncle Stan has just given me, a green Schwinn bicycle. He gives me a push & down I go, down the gentle slope in his back yard in Chicago that becomes a hill, an interminably long hill that, sixty years later, I’m still going down.
BICYCLES IN THE SIXTIES, Sun Wenbo (China)
In my youth—the Cultural Revolution—
the buses roaring through the streets
with Red Guards brandishing guns, tearing down the replicated
Imperial Dam. It was time to “Break the Four Olds”.
I remember leaving home for middle school
two miles away, and saw a young guard in glasses
raised his gun and started shooting porcelain vases
off the power poles.
JUNE ROCK, Yosuke Tanaka (Japan)
Evening in early summer, people are strolling about.
As I ride my bike out of the woods in the park
There’s a man walking in front of the drinking fountain.
Another young man goes down to the base of the bridge
Turns suddenly and goes back up the slope.
Seduced by the humid but pleasant evening breeze,
They’ve all gone outside to while away the time.
© Mia You
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