Two Poems by Gerrit Kouwenaar

Gerrit Kouwenaar, 1960 / 1971

Translated by Veva Leye

Gerrit Kouwenaar in Deed Undone (Frans van de Staak, 1989)

Gerrit Kouwenaar (1923-2014) was a Dutch poet and translator. His writing first appeared in clandestine publications during World War II. After the war he became a key member of ‘De Vijftigers’ (Men of the Fifties), a group of experimental Dutch and Belgian poets who turned away from lyricism to embrace immediacy and physicality in their work. His later poems focused on the tension of writing as a spontaneous deed versus the cold eternity of the word fixed on the page. Frans van de Staak collaborated with Kouwenaar on two successive films in the 1980s, Windshade (1986) and Deed Undone (1989). The following poems, from 1960 and 1971, both play a role in Deed Undone, appearing as intertitles at the beginning, middle and end, and repurposed throughout in dialogue and notes written by the actors.

“One likes to make so many things tangible, while the transience of one’s own life is so very intangible. That contradiction, that tragedy is what attracts me to Kouwenaar's poetry,” said Van de Staak in a 1989 interview.

Note: the layout of ‘certainty already becoming thin’ as an intertitle in Van de Staak’s film differs from its original setting on the page. We present this translation in the form it appears in the film.

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in this room [in deze kamer]

In this room peeping at its occupants

with self-pity,

spewing at its possessors

without passion,

dying uninterruptedly with the fleshy population register

that lodges and lodged here,

living like a rat in a clamp,

pacing up and down despairingly

sits lies and tortures

a love made of space exclusively

and shuts out the world with dust

an alphabet of medicinal dejected letters

rustles like a witch wreath around

their forehead

the wallpaper is infected with the breath

of a murderer of housemaids

from a dead newspaper at the urinal

and sometimes the poisoned dog betrayed and licking

still howls and says

so to speak I have

been no human but a bone

was better than bread crusts

the love that lodges here is lonely like a star

in a universe full of light-years

and the calendar’s time makes calculations of a summer

and summer shivers ice flowers

beneath the heat of a hand

yearning for knowledge and sun

in the desiccated carpet one could write

if words would add something

it is you

I am you, we awaken

endlessly arising

and awakening and arising they see happily

a big hovering hand

like a big hovering hand

directly above their eyes

and awakening in this room they see

a pigeon on the windowsill

and they are frightened

and relocate –

Translation: 2024, Veva Leye

From: De stem op de 3e etage [The Voice on the 3rd Floor]

Publisher: Querido, Amsterdam

certainty already becoming thin

certainty already becoming thin

                                                 one sits here

starting point of looking back

                                                 sits here

                                                             something is paper

thin thinner

                                                             sits here

                                                                         sees

in the lesser heat the postman

the postman approaching

the postman approaching with letters

the postman approaching with letters in hand

in the grip of fabrications

                                                afterwards

it got chillier

                                                     one went

inside

                                                    continuously

ticking

Translation: 2024, Veva Leye

From: Data/Decors

Publisher: Querido, Amsterdam