Lloyd Haft Blog 漢樂逸: Poems from the River Way (from Where Is the Body...)

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.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Poems from the River Way (from Where Is the Body...)

(7)

The river joined us in its overtones,

woven in what we heard but could not hold,

sharing it only as the river stones

darkening let it further. We are told

in light that sings above remembrances,

gleaming over what white salt hands

opened to reach after. Land sense is

lost but the overgiven understands.

Only the over stays. It is a hearing

more than any form, song of assent

ever, ever again new nearing

of yes, yes as we were, and as we went –

home in the only lived and only known,

the light, warmer than winter-whited bone.

(9)

Hard to believe the deepening toward sunset

is deeper light. But here we met: a room

windowed in and to ourselves: here, yet

open on a river. And through all gloom

of ending day a ripple, glimmer came

of where we were, what that water was:

seen in leaving’s darker-sounding name,

deeper its flowing on was in, to us.

Waves rise but it is to us they fall,

falling into view that all is love.

We are the seeing where we are at all,

seeing that all love’s believing of:

love that is believe, as I believe

river is ever, light we’ll never leave.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)