from Awater

The small salon is flanked by shelves and cupboards
and so awash with the overpowering reek
of toiletries that it seems smaller still.
Awater – I must admit I’m quite relieved
to see him, he’d almost given me the slip –
is sitting at a round ceramic sink
wrapped tightly in a cloak of starched white linen.
The barber does his job and I pretend
to be the next in line and take a seat.
I’ve never seen Awater closer by
than in this mirror; never has he appeared
so absolutely inaccessible.
Between the bottles, glittering and splintered,
he rises in the mirror like an iceberg
the scissors’ shining bows go gliding past.
But spring comes soon, and with the mist still hanging
from a sudden passing shower, the barber’s comb
now ploughs a furrow in his tousled hair.
Awater pays and leaves the barbershop.
I follow him without a second thought.
Chance takes a short cut to its destination.
Was it meant to be – Awater’s ending up
in the bar I used to visit with my brother?
It was: he’s even occupied our corner.
I sit down somewhere else. It’s hardly full.
The barman knows me. He knows the way I feel.
He wipes my table for a second time
and dawdles with the white cloth in his hand.
‘The times,’ he mumbles finally, ‘have changed.’

Translated by David Colmer

The poetry of Martinus Nijhoff (1894–1953) was distinguished by clarity of language combined with mystical content. His masterpiece Awater, written in 1934, is the most important Dutch poem of the 20th century.

This edition of Awater features three English translations – by Daan van der Vat, James S. Holmes and David Colmer – made at different periods, for comparison. As well as the Dutch text, it includes excerpts from a lecture by the poet on the origins of Awater, an essay on the first translation of the poem by Daan van der Vat, which quotes from his fascinating correspondence about the poem with Nijhoff; and an essay by the most recent translator, David Colmer. It concludes with an essay by the leading Nijhoff specialist, Wiljan van den Akker, which illuminates key elements of the poem in the context of modernism.