Bij het zien van zijn lichaam (At the sight of his body) is a collection of 44 sonnets on corporality.
While people around us fall ill and die, the need for love and sex for those who remain healthy would only seem to increase. Perhaps it stems from despair, an indulging in pleasure before it is too late, perhaps it is the joy of living. Probably both.

The translator John Irons has translated the whole collection into English.

Spring 2010 three of these poems have been published by the New York based magazine Ganymede.
These translations will also appear later this year in the annual book Ganymede Poets Two.

number 1, A. At the sight of his body, his glow, his splendour scarcely marked by bad maintenance, I thought why then always this distance? And I thought of earlier, of all the half-hearted attempts to receive love from someone who only had hard beauty to offer. It was a game, a contest, but the chase blinds you to the fact that the other is only an image Of who I wish to be myself. Biding my time, stretched out, blandly observing who there at the foot-end is polishing my armour.

For the translation of the first quarter click here

For the translation of the second quarter click here

For the translation of the third quarter click here

For the translation of the fourth quarter click here

During the International Poetry Festival Indonesia in the summer of 2006 I wrote a protestpoem against all the politically charged poetry of poets who seemed to be completely sure about the way the world is made. The poem is called, 'A plea for doubt´. The original dutch version is called ´Pleidooi voor twijfel´.
The english translation I made with the help of translator Linde Voûte.
Click here to read the complete poem.

A rather different poem is `Never realised and never reached`. The title of the poem is a line from the quatrain on the plinth of the bust of poet and classicist J.H. Leopold, formerly in the Rotterdam Museumpark.
The poem itself is a variation on the first 20 lines of Leopold's most famous poem, 'Cheops', about the death and afterlife of the Egyptian pharaoh.
It was translated by Willem Groenewegen.
The dutch version, 'Nooit beseft en nooit bereikt', was set to music and sung by Peter Goedhart.
Published in 'Beelden in vervoering', Bèta Imaginations, Rotterdam, 2001
Click here to read the poem.