Anna's flow became Amsterdam's gain

De senaste sju dikterna visade med all önskvärd tydlighet varför man inte ska döma dikten enbart efter dess språkliga förtjänster. Omgången innehöll flera bra och tankvärda dikter men de saknade väl den språkliga finess som sommardikterna bjöd på dagen innan. Men precis som en bra roman inte behöver vara skriven på Ranelidska så behöver en duktig poet inte vara en fullfjädrad lingvist.

Jag gillade framför allt pseudonymen Anna Enquists kortdikt "I am poured out like water". Med anledning av branden i Västmanland vill jag påpeka att allt i dikten ska ses symboliskt. Poeten bakom det påhittade namnet är Christa Widlund-Broer, född i Amsterdam (1945), och sålunda tävlandes för staden. Hon fick 10 poäng i ronden.

River, flow backwards. Stone, 

be fire again. Air around me, 

be body that carries me and 

comforts. Memory, come undone.

Därmed har Lag Amsterdam kopplat ett rejält grepp om heatet. De leder nu med hela sex poängs marginal.

En vacker kanalbild från Amsterdam.

Score:

Team	Content	Language	Day 3	Total Heat 5
Amsterdam	7	3	10	25
Queensland (Australia)	4	1	5	19
Chicago	2	1	3	18
Vermont (USA)	3	1	4	17
Toscana (Tuscany, Italy)	5	2	7	17
Älvsborg (Sweden)	1	0	1	11
Kansas (USA)	6	1	7	10

***

Lagen glider i mål under rubriken, Individ<>Samhälle.

VERMONT : from In the Memphis Airport / Timothy Steele

 Above the concourse, from a beam,

A little warbler pours forth song.

Beneath him, hurried humans stream:

Some draw wheeled suitcases along

Or from a beeping belt or purse

Apply a cell phone to an ear;

Some pause at banks of monitors

Where times and gates for flights appear.

Although by nature flight-endowed,

He seems too gentle to reproach

These souls who soon will climb through cloud

In first class, business class, and coach.

*

AMSTERDAM : HELLEBOSCH, 5 / Eva Gerlach

(Engelsk översättning: John Irons.)

Someone sings in the house behind doors that are five,

walls that are ten centimetres, bawling,

bellowing, someone scrubs herself bare, lets

air loose everywhere. In pipes and against

tiles, window-panes and thing contrary to

floor what you call? then an echo,

a whistling proceeds, a resonance audible

even in hearths and in logs, sweeping via

chimney flue over beeches, puff balls, sawdust

of guile bug, woe beetle, tumbling on cabbages and

ricocheting against village eardrums. Other than

this song soon nothing will exist. Drum, air,

on the skin round death in the fruit, fair

bursting out of its peel, so. Hours so. Days.

*

QUEENSLAND : from "itinerant blue" / Samuel Wagan Watson

eyes peering through sun-kissed slits

at a landscape bathing in a varnish of itinerant blue

as if the sky has reminded the earth of loneliness

and the old days of communion

a dawn when gamblers get slapped into remission

and the ball starts rolling again with rogue impetus

time to move and abandon what is built

and may later bleed

after days and nights of bargaining into the mirror’s subversion

as the only muse that serenades you

is a computer generated image

wishing to advise

                      you have limited credit to make this call…

*

KANSAS : Name of a tree / Catherine Anderson

Some days I am Ana's teacher, some days she is mine.

This morning, we look through her kitchen window,

the one she can't get clean, cobwebs massed

between sash and pane. The sky is blue-gold, almost

the color of home.

Ana, I say, each winter

I get more lonely. Both of us would like the sun

to linger as that round fruit in June, but Ana says

it's better to forget what you used to know...

*

ÄLVSBORG : ur Möda / Stig Johansson

Nu håller landet semester.

Syrenbersåerna har slutat dofta
och stengärdsgårdarna
                       tiger med sin molande ryggvärk.

Jag stannar vid den kyrkogård där farfar vilar.
Han som en gång bodde i en backstuga
i tillvarons utmarker invid Svltorna i Västergötland.

I gravstenen finns en ortoceratit.
Båda överraskades av döden
                                            mitt i ett pågående arbete.

Jag köper blommor att hedra hans minne
och från sedeln viskar Selma Lagerlöf:
- Inget av all denna möda var förgäves.

*

CHICAGO : from The Other Side of This World / by Calvin Forbes

Put my glad rags in a cardboard box—

This old jiggerboo never grew mature.

Is everthing in its place except me?

Don’t be surprised; I called all day

And the only person I could reach was

The operator; and it’s a sorry day when

Nothing is coming down but your foot.

And how deep is your stomach cause

That’s how far your heart will fall!

When I’m gone I might come back cause

I’m always forgetting something special.

A crease in my overalls, my collar stiff,

*

TOSCANA : from Everything / Giorgio Caproni

  Sage,

sand and water moving;

water trembling at my voice,

reflecting the sadness of

a scream from nowhere.

  You

do not know where people may be.

  The tavern, also burned.

The mail train too.

            Everything.

  Not even mourning is left,

in the grey, to wait

for the last

(nonexistent) word.