Ook duiven | Doves too
Image by yourbartender via Flickr
I’ve been looking at the website of one of the mothers of some little kids at Boy Ten’s school. Jo Govaerts is a Flemish poet and writer, and some of her work is listed there. I think she’s pretty bloody good, and of course I'm missing half of it.
She won't mind if I reproduce one very short one, with a rough translation by me, from her 1989 collection De twijfelaar, published when she was only 17 (her first collection was published at the age of 14):
Ook duiven
Ook duiven kwamen eens
aan land gekropen
met de logge poten van
een amfibie. Misschien
wilden ze sterker
hoopten ze harder
geloofden ze meer.
Doves too
Doves too once came
crawling onto land
on the sluggish legs
of an amphibian. Maybe
their desire was greater
their hope was harder
their belief more strong.
