On language

After Jacques Brel, ‘Le Plat Pays’ / ‘Mijn Vlakke Land’

In Flanders, it is the northern wind that steals

your breath and decimates plains and the southern

sun that makes waters shine.

In my flat country.

I have no language in this place.

Avec la mer     les vagues de dunes

les vents du Nord         s’écartelants.

As long as you don’t understand

we share, we have, no language.

Wanneer ze       koppig            schuimt

over zwart basalt         dijk

            bij eb  natte winden valt

kraakt mijn      land.

Le plat pays.

‘The flat country’ doesn’t sound quite the same.

Can you see the low skies graze?

How their greyness suspends the waterways,

begs us for pardon.

I have no language.

No words like ‘wrath’, ‘gag’ or ‘hurl’.

My imagination doesn’t stretch like Mags’s

to finding images like ‘the night’s vernix’

or ‘cambered hollow’.

Wanneer de Schelde    zingt

                                               in zon-japon

et la plaine est fumante.  

When in summer the fields shimmer with smoke

and the wind laughs in the plains of wheat.

Dan juicht mijn land, mon plat pays.

My flat land sings, hears my language.

Tineke Van der Eecken