GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT

 

A Victim

                               -Gaza-

Not yet closed

but wide-eyed

and full of horror

the eyes

pursed the lips

because time was too short

for a farewell greeting

for a last prayer.

Athena, My Dog

When I need friendship,

and lack human warmth,

I call her and she comes immediately.

When I stretch out my hand,

she offers me her paw.

She cannot speak,

but her eyes say it:

“I love you!”

Flood

Like wide-open arms

reaching pleadingly to the sky

the branches of a tree

in an area flooded by the storm

Nearby

pleaded heavenward

also of people numerous arms

but in vain.

Hope

A sheet is like hope

covering what sometimes seems hopeless.

But there are days

—so dull—

that not even the night

equals their darkness.

Although one knows

—or hopes—

that after the rain,

the sun will shine.

What Will Remain

Everything that ever lived

is sooner or later erased by time.

What remains

is the beauty on earth

which man created before:

beautiful constructions, sculptures,

words and music.

But what will remain of us

—for those who come after us—

as a trace? 

What else

but tasteless constructions,

pollution of water and air,

the greed of the now.

Where To

It dawns

and again paints the sunrise

with light and clouds images,

no artist can equal.

A flock of birds passes by.

Would they, in our disturbed climate,

still know where to go 

or do they neither now

like elsewhere humans,

displaced by the bloody lust 

for power of a ruthless tyrant

who knows neither peace nor humanity.

GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT

GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT, was born 11 September 1944 in Rollegem, the Flemish part of Belgium. In 1987 he moved to the Mediterranean artist village of Altea and integrated in Spanish literary life. Germain Droogenbroodt is an internationally appreciated poet, invited yearly at the most prestigious international poetry festivals. He wrote short stories and literary reviews, but mainly poetry, so far fourteen poetry books, published in 28 countries. He is also translator, publisher, and promoter of modern international poetry. He translated – he speaks six languages – more than thirty collections of German, Italian, Spanish, Latin American, English and French poetry, including anthologies of Bertolt Brecht, Mahmud Darwish, Reiner Kunze, Miguel Hernández, José Ángel Valente, Francisco Brines and also rendered Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Korean poetry into Dutch. As founder and editor of the Belgian publishing house POINT Editions (POetry INTernational) he published more than eighty collections of mainly modern, international poetry. In 1996 he set up a new poetic movement, called neo-sensacionismo with the famous Chinese poets Bei Dao and Duo Duo. Germain Droogenbroodt organised and co-organised several international poetry festivals in Spain. He is vice president of the Academy Mihai Eminescu, organizing the International Poetry Festival Mihai Eminescu in Craiova, Romania, co-founder, and advisor of JUNPA (Japan Universal Poets Association), artistic advisor of the Italian movement Poetry & Discovery, general counsel of the Chinese cultural Association Huifeng, International Shanghai and is founding president of the Spanish cultural foundation ITHACA. He also collaborates with the Italian poetry publication Margutte. His poetic oeuvre is many-sided. After his début with “FORTY AT THE WALL” (1984), defined as neo-romantic poetry, he published “Do you know the country?”, Meditations at Lake Como (Italy), a collection of nature poems. In 1995 he was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship (Scotland) where he wrote “CONVERSATION WITH THE HEREAFTER”, poems about death, awarded in Belgium with the P.G. Buckinx-Prize and “PALPABLE ABSENCE”, a bilingual (Dutch Spanish) collection of love poems. A critic of the Dutch Information Office for Libraries described his love poems as “virtuoso poetry”. At the end of 1998 appeared “BETWEEN THE SILENCE OF YOUR LIPS”, his collected love poems. During his sojourn at the Palace-Fortress “Neemrana” in Rajasthan, 1998, he completed the poetry cycle “THE ROAD”, (read TAO) a poetic bridge between the East and the West, inspiring the Flemish artist Frans Minnaert and the Indian painter Satish Gupta, who enriched “The Road” with their drawings. This philosophical, mystical poetry is so far his most popular book, published already in 25 countries, according to the Icelandic poet-critic Thór Stefansson prophetic, philosophic poetry, translated by such famous poets as Bei Dao (Chinese), Fuad Rifka (Arabic), Jana Stroblova and Josef Hruby (Czech), Milan Richter (Slovak), Emilio Coco, Luca Benassi and Tiziana Orrù (Italian), Ganga Prasad Vimal (Hindi)…In 2001 he wrote in Spanish “AMANECE EL CANTOR” (The Singer Awakes), a homage to the deceased poet José Ángel Valente, followed by “COUNTERLIGHT” written in Ronda (Southern Spain) in 2002, published in Spain by Calima Ediciones, in Romania by ex Ponto, in Belgium by POINT Editions, in both Mongolian languages by GCompress Co., Ltd. Ulaanbaatar, in Arab by Albayat (Morocco), in Hong Kong by “Contemporary Poetry”, and in Taiwan by Poet Culture. Corp. The latter publication includes also “COUNTERLIGHT“. His poetry book “IN THE STREAM OF TIME, Meditations in the Himalayas”, was published in 2008 in Belgium and as part of “Selected Poems by Germain Droogenbroodt”, 2008 in Shanghai by the Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing Group and in Spain, laureate of the XXIX Premio de Poesía Juan Alcaide 2008. Struga Poetry Evenings also published “IN THE STREAM OF TIME” in their prestigious “Pleiades” in 2010. The book was also translated in Japanese and launched at the Kyoto City International Foundation in Kyoto, Japan in 2010 and in Gaelic (Irish) in 2012. A selection of his poems was also published in Bengal in Bangladesh (2012 and 2015). “UNSHADOWED LIGHT”, was launched end 2012 in a bilingual Dutch-Spanish publication at the Book Fair in Antwerp and in several Belgian towns and in Spain. “IN THE STREAM OF TIME, Meditations in the Himalayas” was published in Romania in 2015. The anthology “THE DEWDROPS OF DAWN”, a selection from 11 poetry books, was published with illustrations by Satish Gupta in German, in Dutch and in Croatian (2014). “DEWDROPS”, a selection of 100 haiku in Japanese, English, Spanish, and Dutch was published by JUNPA, Kyoto, and launched in Japan end 2016. His last but one poetry book, “THE EPHEMERAL FLOWER OF TIME” was published end 2016 in Dutch and Spanish and in English (2017) and in 2021 in Serbia, in Japan and in China. “THE ORACLE OF TIME”, published 2019 in the US. His last but one book “The Unrest of the Word” was published Dutch-Spanish in Belgium and Holland and DANCING BUTTERFLY, his second collection of haiku, as published end 2022 in Japan. THE ROAD OF BEING, his latest poetry book, was published 2023 in Bangladesh, Belgium, Chile, India, Holland, Pakistan and next in Albania and in Italy. Poetic Reflections, his next book, honoured with the Fuente Vaqueros International Poetry Prize (best of 500 international submissions) will be published end 2023 in Spanish. Several famous artists made paintings and sculptures inspired by his poetry as international composers composed music to poems, such as the Dutch composer Bart Bakker who composed the “Germain Droogenbroodt cycle”, 12 pieces for flute. Germain Droogenbroodt is yearly invited to give recitals and conferences at universities and at the most prestigious poetry festivals around the world. He was recommended for the Nobel prize of Literature 2017.