By Arnoud van Adrichem.
Corner
Imagine.
The worst is yet to come. You belch a negation.
We look on with slightly more than average interest. The way you
regard an apple that lights up suddenly in your hand. (Don’t drop it.)
Bodies burn fat. Bet the pounds will just fly off?
It’s the experience as a whole. Also: the cash girl as an allegory
of the cash desk. It’s just too much to put into words.
The idea arises, drops its tail and crawls outside from someone’s mouth:
as coarse and oily as the world – a wide audience
applauds. It worked! Our comparison learnt to walk but
what do these images mean to you? The light stares deep into your eyes.
It is a matter of time. Our rhythm expands and doubles up.
Resistance is futile: a fish has to swim. Ideas remain
afloat. We saw you go under in the city canal.
Water opens, water closes. The dark dived in after you.
We don’t know the world as we know it. You look like us.
(Against better judgment: keep practising one’s own signature.)
A great O escapes. Your impatience drove you out of paradise,
a fruity flavour, a metaphor, the heat of the moment.
Yes or no? The date on the carton of milk is getting ever closer.
Air bubbles well up from the deep. The water spits you out.
Too late!
The ultimatum passed. You slept right through the alarm.
The rest is history, is that it? It’s the idea that counts. Splendid.
Normal skin, combination skin. Imagine: we would vanish
forever from your life. (We’re just saying imagine.) All that light!
It hurtles into your home, smashes windows, sows shards.
The abject of sublimity: that will give you ample pause for thought.
Sometimes you fail to find the words. Do not ask us why:
the rhythm comes first. Your shopping slides past the scanner.
The cash girl keeps smiling and smiling. She looks like you in a way.
We stand there panting in the wind, for all the good it does us.
Call this an impasse: we push all your buttons at once.
A couple of jokers painted your mirror black. We
will take your call for help into consideration, but much later,
when the machine halts and you’re ready for the laughing gas.
Something keeps on going wrong. A rush job comes in between,
coffee stains render a name illegible, the telephone rings.
Or even: someone fakes an infarction. You vanish from view but
for a brief moment two bright bulbs light up.
By the full light?
Just act like we’re not there. (Ignore the camera’s.)
What matters is that you behave as naturally as possible.
The signs of impure skin. Teenagers suck hold.
Men break in, the woman is crack. The light is panting.
(You’re into that, aren’t you?) Those chains are props.
It’s important to create the right atmosphere, a rhythm.
Breath defines the room, the roses get drunk in their vase.
Real people are a trend. We need to capitalise on that, sometime.
Imagine: a man and a woman. Imagine: a child. Imagine: a little rip.
This is an immeasurable talent – freshly plucked from the corner shop.
Our crew has been recording for days, but you’ll survive.
It could be anybody’s child. Our concept: flatter than the earth.
You bleach your skin and grab a sun bed. Each hue counts.
What happened to you could happen to anybody.
Warning:
some scenes may be disturbing to young viewers.
It’s just another moment in time, of course. It just won’t
turn into a story. What does the opening scene show us?
A housebroken woman: we could consider liberating her.
With brute force! With utter lies! With exclamation marks!
Her braces glisten. She bleeds a little between her legs.
All money is politic. (Jingling.) Who will ring your till?
Dollar signs as signifiers? Just burn those notes.
It doesn’t really stink. Catastrophes consist of noughts.
We are beginning to equal the image quality of films.
I shall not repeat others’ comments about me (John Ashbery).
Children copy children – a greater need for light, not
insensible to mutation. And that’s on national television…
Who knows where the contingency plan is? Smoke lifts, the mist
in the mountains of Europe.
Nobody in sight
Grab yourself together. While you still can. The sun as the sun.
You don’t have the heart. We’ll come back to this later.
The images hardly sink in. No man will evoke anything.
All possible meanings are possible, in principle.
We’re disgusted by that healthy blush on your rosy cheeks.
Poor old question mark? Sometimes miracles do happen.
Kenneth Goldsmith copies out The New York Times.
It’s moving, it’s not moving. Play with your feelings?
Plagiarism is the nicest word you know. (A word
with character.) Quick question: how much irony can your heart bear?
We suspect more than you think. And it’s good for a laugh.
The noise goes up, dies down. Add names between parentheses.
Each detail is crucial, a displacement on the level, a vibration.
Welcome in our midst. You were a lovely audience.
Translations by Willem Groenewegen, 2011. http://www.willem-groenewegen.nl/
This is the first time Arnoud van Adrichem’s poetry has been translated into English and was only made possible by the generous support of the Nederlands Letterenfonds (the Dutch Foundation for Literature) and of Thomas Möhlmann, and Willem Groenewegen himself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arnoud van Adrichem (Delft, 1978) is a poet, chief editor of literary magazine Parmentier, co-founder and editor of the literary review De Reactor, member of the editorial advisory board of the Flemish literary magazine DW B and publisher at Perdu. He published three volumes of poetry: Vis (2008), Buiten (2008) and Een veelvoud ervan (2010). Together with Jan Lauwereyns he wrote Stemvork (2010), a collection of essays, poems and translations. In cooperation with Han van der Vegt he is working on the translation of one of the founding works of Language Poetry, The Age of Huts (compleat), written by Ron Silliman. Van Adrichem won several important literary prizes such as the Hugues C. Pernathprijs 2009 and the Charlotte Köhler Stipendium 2009.
