Two Poems by Paul Van Ostaijen
translated from the Dutch by Duncan Dobbelmann


The following poems by the Belgian Paul Van Ostaijen (18961928) are drawn from a book Van Ostaijen published in 1921 entitled Occupied City. The subject of the book is Antwerpen, the city in which Van Ostaijen lived while it was brutalized under German occupation during the first World War. "Sous Les Ponts de Paris," most of which was originally written in rhyming couplets, is by far the most formally conservative poem in the book; "Grand Circus of the H. Spirit," on the other hand, is more typical of Van Ostaijen`s poetic strategy at this point in his career. [DD]





Sous Les Ponts de Paris


From all the places where Thou art displayed
over the occupied city weepsThy grief

people have Thou in all the corners hung
for cents in a collection flung

Still hast Thou communion with the people found
they stick their arms in thy warm wounds

We stick our hands in Thy wounds deaf
and blind are we in disbelief

Priests and popes have Thy Cadaver disfigured
taught to believe Thy wounds with our touching hand

People have for Thou churches built
pour down from the walls silver and guilt

Our belief is as small and dim
as before thy statues the dancing flame

In every corner thou wert displayed HARLEQUIN
of naïveté and empathetic pain

Thou art again among us in all Thy statues One
with the occupied city Thy weeping makes a hole in the stone

Under Thy statue I recognize the gutter water
makes a hole in the stone but that too is Thy sorrow

Thou art reborn among us
pained Harlequin Thy Mother a weeping shaken slut

We can hardly see a God even a Harlequin
our time is so sick of suffering and pain


2

Thy last incarnation is for the riffraff alone
I have seen Thou desert the front

The people have not all read of Thy discarded weapons
Holy Deserter, this relic did not come to pass

All the churches would have to ring at this hour
Thy discarded weapons and Thy deserter`s figure

I have seen Thou swing under occupation from city to city
pale and faint worried and wearied

I have seen Thou in my occupied city
in a dancehall the music stopped at Thy entrance


the slow waltz the rhythm of Thy sight was stronger SO
in sorrow than a broken cello


and the gigolos and the whores danced their slow WALTZ light
each to the sorrowful rhythm of Thy SIGHT

I have seen Thou in a stinking alley
Thou wert Landsturmman`s ally

Thou stood among the herded unemployed
to Germany went long trains of the abandoned

On the dike Thou joins in standing the guard
with chilly whores in the rainy dark

Now Thou art tired and worried thin
stuffed full of sorrow art Thou again

The rain drips from Thy filthy drenched hempbeards

over the city



Drips along with the rain over
all the muck of the city to Thy jolting rhythm

Grand Circus of the H. Spirit