Hugo Claus - Even Now

He is edible, digestible

like the crickets of the sea.

The sun burns him

to blisters and shreds

and ash that drifts to the water.

2

At the village pump he let the children

play with his crown of thorns.

He pointed at a comet and said,

“Look, my father’s winking at you.”

Then his mount grew restless.

“I would like,” he said, “the greatest sinner

among you to take a bite out of my ear.”

But they kept staring at his girlish hair

and sullenly he spurred his pony on

across the crushed-ice sand.

3

One of his manifestations preached

the following: “Hey, followers!

What’s going on? People,

God help us, with the hots for purity,

want to replace gold with white!

They want to shuck off their senses,

unsullied by minerals, changing

the gold of thought

into bland half-hearted white!

As if my father’s hair

was not curled and gilded!

As if indulgences and repentance

earn you immortality!

Forget it.

God is in gold alone

and gold is the only reason

for an almost reasonable smile.”

4

“Burdened with crown and armour,

wrapped in my tentacles,

braggart and beggar,

I preached mercy and yearning.

I could bear no emptiness.

“Now I no longer turn my cheek.

I stink like a bed full of lovers

and stiff as a ram

I sometimes dance with fury.

“I only pray when I shit

(and no longer as the Son of Someone).

(What’s more, the Slut is dead.)

I only pray that it will end.”

5

When he felt the first cold

in his pores and glands

he told parables to his contemporaries

and sang psalms for the poor.

Sometimes he stopped breathing

and said to his father, “I thirst.”

When the evenings grew shorter each year

he practised dying.

He only ever coupled

with his mother’s hat.

I have seen too many battles,

heard too many lovers’ howls,

I always travelled too far.

A diorama has replaced my eye,

a humming top my ear.

Too much mud,

too many corpses in it.

Too much joy.

I will now hide among the suitors,

those beggars.

1

A snail trail. That’s all there is to say

that I came by, a Wednesday.

You don’t need to forget yourself,

others forget for you.

And yet: as dark as it was in my ferns,

as white as I once saw the sea,

as cowardly as I died and as often,

there can’t have been a single person.

Didn’t you see me?

Who’s coughing? It’s my throat, that’s all.

Really, no. — I never saw you.

5

They say you’ve blinded me.

Probably.

Although it’s mostly misty when I lunge

at the sound of your hissing

and often the wind from your mouth is cooling

as I kiss.

You said, “Let me be your whore,”

and I asked, “What does that make me?”

You said, “I’ll give you three guesses.”

I guessed: a moment,

a wish, a possibility.

And knew: a pilot light,

an attic full of rags,

yes, a festive hockshop.

And for the others, and there weren’t many,

a ground beetle

rummaging briefly in their hair,

an itch, hardly a breath.

I should go in to you? To you, you sleepwalker?

To ask your forgiveness? Forget it.

Must I erase my sleeping sickness

with midnight masses?

I want no peace with you,

and no prayers to you,

I recognise no dear lord,

I’m not a servant anymore,

Even if I

could see you,

I would decline

your thorns, your thirst, your death, your stench.

IX

Only the incomplete

makes me replete and fat.

Beauty is not harmony.

Most of it, I must forswear,

and all of it, allay.

My shadow is the only thing

that doesn’t make me shy.

Even if you take my arm,

even if you’re very warm,

even if I have no choice

beyond your fingers, nose and cheek,

even if my belly swells for you

even if you bring me in from the cold,

even if you shut your mouth,

even if I grow in your earth,

I still won’t let myself be caught,

between your gallows and garrotte.

Stay in your wood,

where people thrive.

I don’t want to walk there,

hawk there, be pushed underwater there.

I won’t surrender my shell,

my shadow, my husk.

XI

I hear with my little ear

something that I don’t hear.

Whoever wants to hear me

must speak with my mouth.

Who’s this? Me.

And you?

I see that you think

that I just screamed,

and you heard no sound.

I see that you hope

that I called

for help perhaps.

It was my throat,

it wasn’t me,

it was my playful voice box,

my sweetheart,

or my rutting grief.

But it, Father, was not me.

Not once in all the days of your life

will you know that kind of delight.

XIII

Saying I hoped to eventually make bird!

Crippled wings and all!

Saying I wanted to save myself

through mortification and lies!

I wanted indemnity,

I wanted distraction,

in my secure sick bay

full of shells from the old days

yesterday’s dressings

and tomorrow’s toe nails,

waiting for someone to come

and sew me back together

with gossamer, angel hair.

I’ve been spoilt in my tent of pain.

I believe I’m smiling.

Begin this year in glory

and hear what the young father,

hoarse and red,

whispers to his first-born:

“Leave and dread.”

It’s fine for Dad to hit me

because Dad likes to

with his hand of hard wood.

If I was big and fat,

I’d do it too, if I could,

to a kid

who loves his dad as much as I do.

“If you get married, you’ll hit rock bottom,”

my mother said,

and I felt it at once, that layer of rock,

under the soles of my seven-league boots.

He slammed the door.

Never going back.

Not if she put him on a throne.

But by the time he crossed the tracks

he was tired and his feet were sore.

He thought, “No-one’s made of stone.”

— Just go away.

To your mother or something.

— There is no or something.

— To your mother then.

— She’s dead.

— Oh, poor thing. A long time now?

— Since before I was born.

A she-ape, but bald,

that’s what I call her.

It’s not exactly flattering,

but what can I do,

it happens to be true,

especially at three in the morning.

“You alone can help me,” she said.