Now the winter lays bare its dead,
fish are surfacing, right under the ice
the white bellies curve on their sides.

Shyly they’re offered
as gifts of goodbye
from the reclining frost.

“Why can’t they melt along,
so their stiffness is broken and
they’ll swim again, swim away like anything,”
asks the child holding my hand. “Can they?”

In spring a lot is possible (see the trees),
but no, I say, “Dead is dead.”
“Bread is bread,” echoes the child, “Red
is red; that rhymes.” And I agree.

Dat rijmt

Nu ontmantelt de winter zijn doden
vissen komen naar boven, vlak onder het ijs
liggen hun witte buiken gebogen

Schuchter worden zij aangeboden
als een afscheidsgeschenk
van de wijkende vorst

Waarom zij niet mee kunnen smelten
zodat hun verstarring doorbroken en
zij weer zwemmen konden, keihard wegzwemmen
vraagt het kind aan mijn hand: kunnen ze dat?

Veel kan in de lente (vraag het de bomen)
maar nee, zeg ik: dood is dood,
brood is brood echoot het kind, rood
is rood; dat rijmt. En ik knik.

—

J. Bernlef (14 January 1937 – 29 October 2012) was a Dutch writer, poet, novelist and translator, much of whose work centers on mental perception of reality and its expression. He won numerous literary awards, including the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 1984 and the P. C. Hooft Award in 1994, both of which were for his work as a whole.

Arno Bohlmeijer is a poet and novelist writing in English and Dutch. His work has been published in five countries, in various journals and reviews, and in Universal Oneness: An Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World.