Voyage
by Hester Knibbe. Translated by Jacquelyn Pope.
He is in a photograph, standing
next to me; my time lies locked awayin his eyes. We watch the unloading
of the boat, rough Playmobil
that fights with its moorings. Like this,in the shelter of a body, I feel
myself untethered, come
what may: empty landscapewith a tent that makes the earth
a bare mattress and where we break our
daily bread with every weapon at hand,or a luxury room with a canopy bed,
the Last Supper in cross stitch on the wall.
About the Authors:
Hester Knibbe is one of the leading Dutch poets writing today. She has published fifteen collections of poems, including Archaïsch de dieren (2014), which was awarded the VSB Poetry Prize. “Voyage” appears in this translation in Hungerpots, just out from Eyewear Publications.
American poet Jacquelyn Pope is a widely published poet and translator and author of Watermark from Marsh Hawk Press (2005). Her translation of Hester Knibbe’s poetry has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, the Academy of American Poets, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
