The End – gedicht door Mark Strand

[Anna Krasko @akrasko97]

The End 

by MARK STRAND

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

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Het Einde

Niet iedereen weet wat hij aan het einde zal zingen,
Naar de pier kijkend terwijl het schip wegvaart, of hoe het eruit zal zien
Wanneer hij vastgehouden wordt door het gebrul van de zee, roerloos, daar aan het einde,
Of waar hij op zal hopen als eenmaal duidelijk is dat hij nooit meer terug zal gaan.

Als de tijd verstreken is om de roos te snoeien of de kat te aaien,
Wanneer de zonsondergang die het gazon in brand steekt en de volle maan die het met ijs bekleedt
Niet langer verschijnen, niet elke man weet wat hij in plaats daarvan zal ontdekken.
Wanneer het gewicht van het verleden tegen niets leunt en de hemel

Is niets meer dan herinnerd licht, en de verhalen van cirrus
En cumulus lopen ten einde, en alle vogels blijven hangen in de vlucht,
Niet iedereen weet wat hem te wachten staat, of wat hij zal zingen
Wanneer het schip waarop hij vaart in de duisternis glipt, daar aan het einde.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52172/the-end-56d2306e43cbd

 

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The Continuous Life

 

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don’t really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

 

Mark Strand

 

Source: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-continuous-life/

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