Remco Campert Biography

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
...