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Tsead Bruinja
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no total stranger she who brought the news of your impending death I thought I’ll sing then sing to salvage all the things I know as yours before the gates of hell I take the book of forgetting on my lap and start to fish you up from this dead script more foreign still than any tongue just like the time you tried to pull me out of a hole in the ice under a bridge panicked and ended in the drink yourself I can’t escape this song come father strap my skates on now I’ve almost got my boyhood wellies on come strap my skates on now the ice is thin like your exhausted face you stare at me through watering eyes rise up from that thick woollen grave and strap on my skates the water will see us fly above it mother brought us happy to the shore where our first trip began with her in our thoughts over transparent black over careful watch out snags sticking up frozen bream fish fingers I joked trying to break the ice with childish humour with childish hands but you were with your wife sick at home and almost in your place of birth the farms blanketed winter-white over dumbstruck grass green grass which once had known the soft soles of the feet that now alone with me without a girl raced over sad water better than anyone else even mother these ditches and fields knew you this village with its churchyard full of familiar faces the golden cock the sharp steeple close to the farm where you taught yourself short-wave and snare drum where your father saw you galloping no saddle bareback on the horse the spade cut the ground early for him who leant me his name three times when I was too young to be called a father come and strap on my skates I’ve got the tight green wellies on strap on my skates the ice is thin as the temporary distance between us now that I can look at you dry-eyed across the line strap my skates on one last time or climb once more into the pen and let the paper see us flying racing howling over ice tell me again about the time you kicked your music teacher who’d hit you hard and gutless on the ear with a bunch of keys right between the legs a so-called fainting fit refused point-blank to apologise authorities always pissed you off at home where between the crooked and the straight you ploughed your own deep path of pity heavy as stone the lack of forgiveness balled in your gut when you couldn’t wear the cross round your neck and your mother no longer had a heavenly home to wait for you in strap on my skates father this world is what’s real between her and me you were the bridgemaster summer has set in now my skates are greased in the cellar before us whirligig beetles dance on the water the water is blue like slate so beautiful so dark Translation by David Colmer |
Tsead Bruinja is a poet unafraid of delving into the alternative, the small and the unknown. For instance, Bruinja's debut collection was written in Frisian: De wizers yn it read (The meters in the red) appeared in 2000, with little worry over the relatively small number of the language’s readers. From 2003 onward, however, after publishing Dat het zo hoorde (The way it should sound), he also began publishing his collections in Dutch. Bruinja actively searches for unknown, unfamiliar artistic grounds. In addition to being a poet, he is a critic, performer, editor, interviewer, teacher and, when a Frisian Bob Dylan tribute album was released, even a musician and singer. The poet deliberately seems to investigate the broader, wider uses of his writing in order to discover new and surprising poetic configurations. Bruinja's collaborations with painters and sculptors, such as Milou van Ham, René Knip and Joep van der Made, should be seen as examples of this endeavor. Still, such expansive curiosity does not seem to slow down Bruinja's poetic production. After Dat het zo hoorde, he has published five more collections of poetry, of which Ik ga het donker maken in de bossen van (2019) is the most recent. In 2019, Bruinja became the seventh poet laureate of the Netherlands, an office he holds for two years until passing the baton. |
