#hester knibbe

[dutchjan]

29-06-2025

[citroensap]

hester knibbe – endymion (uit de bloemlezing rouw samengesteld door hagar peters, 2021)

[violettesiren]

Sometimes we mimic migrating birds sort of fleeing from the all too ordinary, looking for ourselves in another place to find out: are we still

the ones we think we know and how many new surroundings will we soon braid into our sight, for example of a wood close to home, a too-familiar

path or instead just the unknown direction that we here now wine in hand unfold from the map for tomorrow? But

no matter how far we travel, we wander and sleep always in the same body that keeps intruding immodestly, letting us know what it has gathered

of gusto delight hunger and being tired of and letting us out on bail only in dreams. We love it and we rage at it.

Sometimes we mimic migrating birds by Hester Knibbe

[dutchjan]

March 07, 2024

[missedstations]

“Can I be guessed? Or can I be known” - Hester Knibbe

Can I be guessed? Or can I be known, broken down into more than hair and skin, the sharpness of tooth and nail? A bird flies through the air, wings so wide that you can count its outstretched feathers, but who decodes its call? Someone dancing nude in ballet shoes, arms spread, may still be hiding their soul behind a tiny tattoo. I have rooms with curtains drawn and nothing to conceal, attics and cellars with locks and codes I routinely reveal by blushing out of the blue. At times I crack my hanker like a walnut, show the halves in open hands: see this I. And only I know the inimitable tumbling in my head. Translated from the Dutch by Vivien D. Glass

[blissblauu]

It’s a beautiful world, you said, with these trees, marshes, deserts, grasses, rivers and seas and so on. And the moon is really something in its circuits of relative radiance. Include the wingèd M, voluptuous Venus, hotheaded Mars, that lucky devil J and cranky Saturn, of course, plus U and N and the wanderer P, in short the whole solar family, complete with its Milky Way, and count up all the other systems with dots and spots and in that endless emptiness what you’ve got is a commotion of you-know-what. It’s a beautiful universe, you said, just take a good look through the desert’s dark glasses for instance or on your back in seas of grass, take a good look at the deluge of that Rorschach—we’re standing out there somewhere, together. - “Light Years” by Hester Knibbe, translated by Jacquelyn Pope

[poetpls]

Light-years - Hester Knibbe

It’s a beautiful world, you said, with these trees, marshes, deserts, grasses, rivers and seas and so on. And the moon is really something in its circuits of relative radiance. Include the wingèd M, voluptuous Venus, hotheaded Mars, that lucky devil J and cranky Saturn, of course, plus U and N and the wanderer P, in short the whole solar family, complete with its Milky Way, and count up all the other systems with dots and spots and in that endless emptiness what you’ve got is a commotion of you-know-what. It’s a beautiful universe, you said, just take a good look through the desert’s dark glasses for instance or on your back in seas of grass, take a good look at the deluge of that Rorschach—we’re standing out there somewhere, together.

(trans. Jacquelyn Pope)

[violettesiren]

It’s a beautiful world, you said, with these trees, marshes, deserts, grasses, rivers and seas

and so on. And the moon is really something in its circuits of relative radiance. Include

the wingèd M, voluptuous Venus, hotheaded Mars, that lucky devil J and cranky Saturn, of course, plus

U and N and the wanderer P, in short the whole solar family, complete with its Milky Way, and count up all the other

systems with dots and spots and in that endless emptiness what you’ve got is a commotion of you-know-what. It’s a beautiful

universe, you said, just take a good look through the desert’s dark glasses for instance or on your back

in seas of grass, take a good look at the deluge of that Rorschach—we’re standing out there somewhere, together.

Light-years by Hester Knibbe  (Translated by Jacquelyn Pope)