SOURCES OF INSOMNIA
SOURCES OF INSOMNIA I
She carried the lamp behind the water lilies.
The midnight dawn gnaws through
the high chamber where Maria sleeps,
as I long for water and for lilies.
I lie beside her. She rests with me. And none
of us are in this world jointly,
for nothing is here for elsewhere joined
where no desire tears one and the other asunder.
The wall becomes mirror of the army of stars.
The silence swells with fish. In the algae
grate the saline crystals of old sores.
Will I remain then in the watery grave
while the phantom ship sails on forever?
- But when Maria sighs, I take her hand.
She carried the lamp behind the water lilies.
The midnight dawn gnaws through
the high chamber where Maria sleeps,
as I long for water and for lilies.
I lie beside her. She rests with me. And none
of us are in this world jointly,
for nothing is here for elsewhere joined
where no desire tears one and the other asunder.
The wall becomes mirror of the army of stars.
The silence swells with fish. In the algae
grate the saline crystals of old sores.
Will I remain then in the watery grave
while the phantom ship sails on forever?
- But when Maria sighs, I take her hand.
When Maurice Gilliams won the Grand Prize for Literature in 1980, many a newspaper journalist was at a loss: as far as the press was concerned Gilliams had always been "the Great Unknown" of Dutch-language literature. But in the literary world itself Gilliams' work was considered not only an inside tip but also a milestone in the development of twentieth-century literature
