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Gedicht

Helen Dunmore

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries

What I get, I bring home to you:
a dark handful, sweet-edged,
dissolving in one mouthful.

I bother to bring them for you
though they’re so quickly over,
pulpless, sliding to juice

a grainy rub on the tongue
and the taste’s gone. If you remember
we were in the woods at wild strawberry-time

and I was making a basket of dock-leaves
to hold what you’d picked,
but the cold leaves unplaited themselves

and slid apart, and again unplaited themselves
until I gave up and ate wild strawberries
out of your hands for sweetness.

I licked at your palm:
the little salt-edge there,
the tang of money you’d handled.

As we stayed in the woods, hidden,
we heard the sound system below us
calling the winners at Chepstow,
faint as the breeze turned.

The sun came out on us, the shade blotches
went hazel: we heard names
bubble like stock-doves over the woods

as jockeys in stained silks gentled
those sweat-dark, shuddering horses
down to the walk.
Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore

(Verenigd Koninkrijk, 1952)

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Wild Strawberries

What I get, I bring home to you:
a dark handful, sweet-edged,
dissolving in one mouthful.

I bother to bring them for you
though they’re so quickly over,
pulpless, sliding to juice

a grainy rub on the tongue
and the taste’s gone. If you remember
we were in the woods at wild strawberry-time

and I was making a basket of dock-leaves
to hold what you’d picked,
but the cold leaves unplaited themselves

and slid apart, and again unplaited themselves
until I gave up and ate wild strawberries
out of your hands for sweetness.

I licked at your palm:
the little salt-edge there,
the tang of money you’d handled.

As we stayed in the woods, hidden,
we heard the sound system below us
calling the winners at Chepstow,
faint as the breeze turned.

The sun came out on us, the shade blotches
went hazel: we heard names
bubble like stock-doves over the woods

as jockeys in stained silks gentled
those sweat-dark, shuddering horses
down to the walk.

Wild Strawberries

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds
Lira fonds
Versopolis
J.E. Jurriaanse
Gefinancierd door de Europese Unie
Elise Mathilde Fonds
Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot
Veerhuis
VDM
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