Friday 2 July 2010

Poem by the Dutch writer Willem Jan Otten



ALEXANDER AND ETERNITY

1

His garden philosopher he called me,
but I was toothless and intrigued him
by being doting and untravelled.

I saw that something scared him,
hard to know precisely what, oh nonsense,
he said, and then I just let slip:

you fear the first of January.
What do you mean, he softly asked.
Eternal one, I said, a chance remark,

I spin on my own axis, while you move.


2

For a great conqueror time is
the forward downward thing,
the deep-descending chute where all

the realm collapses in a ceaseless fall.
Iskander was so right. Time only moves
in one direction. Shall. Shall.

But by the never-ending Royal Road,
at every hamlet’s edge there always stands,
just like a bar line in a music stave,

a mumbling philosopher like me, who waves
and tells Iskander: Your journey, that is me,
and I’ve a memory that’s pitiful,

not even you will I take to my grave.


3

There’s no direction and no downward path,
were there no toothless poet to be passed,
eternity is where the conqueror

without contrivance loses all his wits,
it’s just a flash, and then the sideways step,
the Mighty Will stills all his legions

and wipes the dotard drivel off my skin.

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