Comfort & Consolation
March 20, 2020
‘Then, consolation was just like parking, to measure is to know and still sometimes/ your estimation is too narrow, you continue searching for the right place, sometimes can embrace/ can also require several circles around each other\' –
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld writes in her poem ‘Hollow enough to hide an echo’. Perhaps this is why poetry, the genre par excellence that, trying and probing, seeks to find a language for our reality, can lend a helping hand when it comes to consolation. Directly or with a detour, speaking of love, the warmth of a memory, the shimmering surface of water, and the song of birds against the imperturbable air. Of the small and great consolations that everyday life bears within even in unsettling times.
© Jan Baeke
Translator: Jan Baeke
Poems
THE SURVEYOR
MENDİL
THE GROWING EDGE
NAIL
TRAIN
MOWED POEM
GENERAL MOO
EARTH
THE EVENING DRAWS NEAR
LULLABY FOR THE SLEEPLESS
THE MOON
POETRY
Down with a Cold
PRINSENGRACHT POEM WITH EXPENSIVE FOOD
WINDOW-CLEANER SEES PAINTINGS
DEAR HEPTANESIA,
WAKE UP
THE SCHOOLS HAVE SHUT
THIS IS MY DAY
TO DRAW BACK THE BLINDS
BEATTIE IS THREE
GLITTERING PASSAGE
UNTIL SOMEONE TRACES ME
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