Dirk van Bastelaere
Dirk van Bastelaere Poems
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Those were days of cycling in the mountains. Of climbing, descending.
Of enormous hunger for more and as long as they blocked the peak's
virginity from view in their groaning scent of resin,
...
Bared heart, let yourself be dragged, gasping for breath,
through the mire,
cold fled 'ing on the satin of a cushion
...
When the Swiss evening falls,
backlit behind the billowing white of curtains
the mountain's watching.
...
It's the heart's heart: heart attack,
when matter hangs and crashes, shot
through with black tissue, by which
...
Heart, the market square
is slashed with hail and swamped with floodlight.
In the Café du Commerce
...
Heart, I can consider you in generous terms
of imagery to prove your transferable
nature, your utility, Generator,
...
Day has come. But who makes that
True? Not the woman with her hand
Beside a light switch. Also in the hall,
Not the red sweater around a body.
...
Where I am a flower meadow
is missing, even though I'm standing in
a parched flower meadow
with hair blossoming like an orchard
...
Dirk van Bastelaere Biography
Dirk van Bastelaere debuted with the collection of verses, Vijf jaar (Five Years, 1984), for which he was awarded the prize for the best debut. The poems are on the theme of the fragmentation of the ego faced with the chaos of the outside world. In 1988, Pornschlegel en andere gedichten (Pornschlegel and other poems) was published, one of the most controversial collections of the past twenty years. Partly thanks to this volume, van Bastelaere is seen as the major representative of postmodernism in Flemish poetry.)
The Best Poem Of Dirk van Bastelaere
Fables of the Sacred Heart
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Those were days of cycling in the mountains. Of climbing, descending.
Of enormous hunger for more and as long as they blocked the peak's
virginity from view in their groaning scent of resin,
pine trees acted out this problem to excess. But above the
treeline you feel free.
Trundling along a stony track, Jesus kept
catching the hem of his robe with his feet.
He'd missed the refreshment stations. Was the only cyclist on foot. The
wind was ripping his raiment to shreds. Lightning roamed through his hair.
We'd all cycled off
somewhere else.
When he reached the bare, snow-covered peak, Jesus turned
round, bewildered. No farmhouse. No place of
emotion. No strong, ascetic
birds. No-one had ever let him down as badly as Rilke.
That very second, Jesus saw his Father's dentures
flash white in the valley. By way of a message, His teeth formed the
words ‘YOU SUCK'.
As tattered as the state of his calling,
Jesus pulled two ribs apart in the white, marble glory
of his body and, as the blood gurgled
from his ribcage like a mudslide razing a mountain village,
revealed his Sacred Heart to a nation of TV viewers.
We saw the drivenness of a kid who's crawled his life through sewers.
This was no Jesus. This wasn't the Corcovado Jesus. Not the
Dear Lord who Speaks to us.
This was a mountain erupting out of its mountainness.
Translated by Francis Jones
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