Ons Erfdeel/The Low Countries liet vorig jaar een gedicht van mij vertalen naar het Engels door  poëzievertaler Paul Vincent. Zij kozen voor het gedicht ‘Een eigen oceaan’, dat ik eerder publiceerde in het Vlaamse poëzietijdschrift Het Liegend Konijn. Ik schreef het gedicht in 2018, in opdracht van het Nederlands Symfonie Project bij het Vierde Pianoconcert van Rachmaninov.

De vertaling werd gepubliceerd in vaste rubriek ‘Friday Verses’ op de website van Ons Erfdeel, waar ook de Nederlandse versie te lezen is.

An Ocean of its Own

I did not know I would be gone
forever when I left
when the century was almost over
in which jazz and a little later the two
of you were born, in the midst of
the murderous storm which in this corner
of the world, where I arrived,
would provide a few decades
of care, a conscience we could
not guarantee for long since
a new set of czars arose
new and different, yes, I call it evil,
and people are seduced again
they have forgotten the storm.

I left home as one does
could not know we wouldn’t be able
to talk anymore, that the two of you
were in fact already my children, that I would bear
a child of my very own, its eyes
yours, father, its love of summer fruit
yours, mother.
I went away. What lay between
us obtained its own measure,
an ocean of its own.