'Blest Are They That Stay...'
in memoriam Li Shenquan
(1)
'Blest are they that stay.'
So the trees would say:
see how the tallest longest of them
leafless at the end
receive the good,
reap the golden traces
of the longest-setting sun.
What we say is other: say
young, stay young.
'Later comers longer last' -
and what is last?
Ask it not of us who waver,
ask it of the wind.
(2)
No one writes them in.
Wind it is that blows,
blights them in:
pine's dark green,
bough's down bend.
Wind it is that makes,
takes: breath that comes
and in it was,
out it is
quicker than the light
that came and was,
quickly ending as the twig it wrung.
(3)
What you see of the wind that was
is the tree
that it gutted,
like every form an after:
trace of a could,
wreck of a would -
stump where the winged of a moment
showed,
glowed and did not stay.
--Lloyd Haft (for Dutch version and painting by Li Shenquan, see the post 'Li Shenquan 李神泉 in memoriam (gedichten)' with label 'NieuweGedichten', in the February 2011 archive)
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Brief bio sketch
Lloyd Haft (1946- ) was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin USA and lived as a boy in Wisconsin, Louisiana and Kansas. In 1968 he graduated from Harvard College and went to Leiden, The Netherlands for graduate study in Chinese (M. A. 1973, Ph. D. 1981). From 1973 to 2004 he taught Chinese language and literature, mostly poetry, at Leiden. His sinological publications include Pien Chih-lin: A Study in Modern Chinese Poetry (1983/2011; published in Chinese translation as 发现卞之琳: 一位西方学者的探索之旅 in 2010) and A Guide to Chinese Literature (with Wilt Idema, 1997). His liberal modern Dutch reading of Laozi's Daode jing was published as Lau-tze's vele wegen by Synthese in September 2017. His newest books in English are translations: Herman Gorter: Selected Poems (Arimei Books, 2021), Zhou Mengdie: 41 Poems (Azoth Books, 2022), and Totally White Room (Poems by Gerrit Kouwenaar, Holland Park Press, 2023). He has translated extensively into English from the Dutch of Herman Gorter, Gerrit Kouwenaar, and Willem Hussem, and from the Chinese of various poets including Lo Fu, Yang Lingye, Bian Zhilin and Zhou Mengdie.
Since the 1980s he has also been active as a poet writing in Dutch and English. He was awarded the Jan Campert Prize for his 1993 bilingual volume Atlantis and the Ida Gerhardt Prize for his 2003 Dutch free-verse readings of the Psalms (republished by Uitgeverij Vesuvius in 2011). His newest books of poetry in Dutch are Intocht (Introit) and Beluisteringen (Soundings), published by Uitgeverij Van Warven in November 2023.
After early retirement in 2004, for a number of years Lloyd Haft spent much of his time in Taiwan with his wife Katie Su. In June 2019 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of National Taiwan Normal University. In addition to writing and translating, his interests include Song-dynasty philosophy and tai chi. For many years he sang in the choir of a Roman Catholic church of the Eastern Rite in The Hague.
Since the 1980s he has also been active as a poet writing in Dutch and English. He was awarded the Jan Campert Prize for his 1993 bilingual volume Atlantis and the Ida Gerhardt Prize for his 2003 Dutch free-verse readings of the Psalms (republished by Uitgeverij Vesuvius in 2011). His newest books of poetry in Dutch are Intocht (Introit) and Beluisteringen (Soundings), published by Uitgeverij Van Warven in November 2023.
After early retirement in 2004, for a number of years Lloyd Haft spent much of his time in Taiwan with his wife Katie Su. In June 2019 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of National Taiwan Normal University. In addition to writing and translating, his interests include Song-dynasty philosophy and tai chi. For many years he sang in the choir of a Roman Catholic church of the Eastern Rite in The Hague.
