Remco Campert Poems

It's thawing on the
Overtoom
yet the frost's setting in again
or so my feet tell me
...

I was sure that I was missing something
but couldn't say what
so I forgot about it as I walked down the street,
at ease with the here and now in my Amsterdam
never closed, open night and day.

But the sense that I had been deprived of something
crept up on me and filled me with yearning
for something I felt I had lost:
this building and the idea of it
which hoarded the splendour of the past
out of which our present is born every day.

Without the past our present cannot hold,
we are empty and without form,
our existence, which endures longer than today, remains unsure.

Of this endurance, stretching towards eternity
this building was the symbol,
but the entrance was barred,
the door had closed to,
and this city also, this land, this nation
seemed no longer to open up,
but was sealed off from its past.

Now that I knew what I was missing
the long wait could begin -
ten years of slow days
ten years of wakeful nights -
till what was to come would be disclosed.

But today, 13 April 2013,
past and future are once more open
and my old story can now be heard
in a new spring and a new building,
our country, our museum,
the museum of our country,
our Rijksmuseum.
...

Write it down quickly
before I forget
in the car with D. and N.
cutting across America's seasons
muggy sunlight in Santa Barbara
wet snow in Denver
and in every Best Western hotel
the TV's flickering light
on her dear sleeping face
like a young girl once again

but writing down the words
alters what I want to remember
that which had no words
was a living breathing image
so now I have two versions of the same
today I can superimpose them
but tomorrow when I'm gone
only the words are left
signs evoking something
that no eye sees anymore
...

To the journalist H.J.A. Hofland
Going outdoors

Oh well I'll just go out a bit
my work's getting nowhere again.
I'll turn right today
there's more to see in that direction.
For example they're digging up the tramrails
I can stand and watch.


Good intentions

Walk straight
keep your stomach in
and your buttocks
shoulders back
swing your arms relax
and don't look so disagreeable.


News

Someone I hardly know grabs my lapel
near the Leidseplein.
"Have you heard? Jan Timman's
been selected. Great isn't it?"
He casts his eyes around wildly
Anyone else he can tell?


Reading Matter

Someone's sitting in tram 5
I'd call young
now I'm getting on myself.
Dressed neatly
coat with fur-trimmed collar
aubergine-coloured shoes
with tassels.
He's leafing through Story
and every time he turns a page
he sniffles loudly.
Finally he gets stuck into
an article with the headline:
"Good-luck charm brought lovers
true marital bliss."


Café Terrace

"A peaceful end,
that's all I want now",
says the old man at the pavement café.
"But there are plenty of things to live for,"
says the woman drawing up her chair.
"Take me, for instance, I love cream,
I'm a real greedy-guts."
And she takes
a spray-can from her pocket
and squirts some whipped cream
in her empty coffee cup.


In the Café 1

I'm rock-solid, chum,
you can rely on me
it's a jovial man talking
jacket over his shoulder oozing honesty
it's afternoon in the café.
You can see it straightway
people don't trust him an inch.


Friendship

Friendship,
you shouldn't mess around with it
just as you shouldn't touch
a painting that's finished.


In the Café 2

"I've got ears like taxi doors."
the man saying this
is incredibly fat.
He means it figuratively
there's nothing special about his ears.
But his feet
how small and neat they are!


Holland

Half-past seven that's strange
who are all those people outside
has something happened?
oh no, it's Thursday, late-night shopping.
I feel my blood turn cold.


Reading on the street

Walking in the street and reading
you don't see that so often these days.
If I still do it sometimes
I'm walking in the past.
There's not much traffic
I hear radio music from an open window
a girl in a new-look dress
brushes past me.
The book I'm reading,
is Gerard Reve's The Evenings.
It's "just out".
...

in the dismantled house
stripped forever of your breath
I hear your voice one last time
in the herebefore:

"Remco, what are you doing in my house?"

Since I was born
that question's never left my side -
what was I doing in my mother's house?

Roaming around your death
I see the sunny travel brochure
still lying in your emptied room
and the boat gliding
through a veil of mist
that we once sailed in together
over the long deep waters of Lake Garda
to see for instance
if in the curiosity cabinet of D'Annunzio's house
Eleonora Duse had her niche
or whether in some lives
actresses were not doomed for ever
to play the secondary roles
while before the footlights
the man parades
his prompted sorrow
to the applauding claque

but all that's for later
first there's the journey
to find something I don't yet know
with the joyful shouts of children in the schoolyard
always on my mind

seek what you love best
the thing that moves you
...

It was late in the evening
rain caught in lamplight
beat down on the cobbles
of the Old Mechlin Road
you were wearing an off-white dress
I'd have guessed you were fifteen
you were walking down the street
as I was crossing
cars passed by
braked rode on
you asked me the way to the Muse Café
the bar where that singer was on
singer you said of your song
voice that had found you
you were on your way there
"Just follow the tramlines"
I let you go

Antwerp girl
you're still on my mind
what have I done
with my life
...

For Cees Nooteboom
Late in the Autumn
weather turned
storm pounced on the palm trees
rushed down the hotel corridors
final visitors packed their bags -
the English couple on their last legs
the beautiful girl and her mother
who smoked long cigarettes
and waited for something that never came
the tennis star past his prime -
I lingered on
a nuisance to the staff

in this hotel I was dreadfully unhappy
as usual that just happened
but I stayed put
the book I'd not yet started
like a huge egg in my arms
self-imposed trial of strength
nobody had asked for

I thought of you on your island
or en route between two continents
gone before you'd even landed
seeking safety in movement
so unlike me, yet just the same

at that thought
stuck in that foreign eyrie
suddenly I found wings
I got better, I was cured
...

It was raining sunlight
that day in the Gare du Nord
when you came to me

we hugged each other
you said you felt so happy
I knew where the bus

no. 26 that would take us
through Belleville's busy streets
to where you liked to be

the Rue des Pyrénées
where I said ‘obrigado'
to the concierge

where you could leave your bag
and wash your hair
and ask what next

It was raining sunlight
that day in the Gare du Nord
when you came to me.

You'd work to do and an address
films about oppressed peoples
far from Abbesses

which could safely be seen
in an art movie house
far from the masses

Court Saint-Louis
that's where you had to be
straight after lunch

in Popincourt eleventh district
you put on your new shoes
we crossed Père-Lachaise

It was raining sunlight
that day in the Gare du Nord
when you came to me.
Much later in streets
full of rubble and potholes
in Ménilmontant

I tried to tell you
about the ravages of time
and how despite all the heart

but you squeezed my hand
and said someone else
and that things were as they were

It was raining sunlight
that day in the Gare du Nord
when you came to me.

Oh! the leaves they have died
and our footsteps have faded
all I have is that tune.
...

In the balmy afternoon wind
I was sitting on a bench
on the Boulevard du Général Leclerc
next to an old gent
who'd fought in Indochina
rosette in his buttonhole
white cravat round his wizened neck
at his feet a little mutt
watching everything
when suddenly Sophie Marceau
an actress I recognized from the papers
stepped out of a limousine
followed by her photographer
and holding her sun-hat in place
gave us an eyeful
of her cream-white armpit

the mutt yapped
and the old gent and I
stood up in unison
sang a ditty
did a couple of dance steps
and waggled our bottoms

she didn't see us
...

for Deborah
Oh how beautiful
it was in Ostend
in that little hotel
in the rain.

I couldn't be reached
that gentleman the manageress said
ah ne connais pas
no he has left already
I'm so sorry Madame
c'est rien Madame she said,
telephonically
to my love.

As for me I was hanging around
in the station concourse
hiding behind the evening editions
and leering at the English schoolgirls
with their little knapsacks
taking on the colour
of the wall I leant against

or at night
in my sand-coloured mackintosh
lying deadbeat on the beach
waving at the little lights
of the boat for Dover.

What a pity sir
I thought you'd already left
we never saw you
not even at breakfast
please accept
our sincere apologies
Madame will certainly be cross and
the weather has been dreadful this summer.

Invisible I thought
I'm invisible
and in a lethal gust of joy I merged
with the flowery tub chair in the corridor
with the ashen cobblestones in the church square
with the racing cyclists that rainy Sunday
with the seashell doll in the souvenir shop

and with my sweetheart
who so as not to be on the safe side
arrived after all.
...