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Benjamin De Roover: Hugo Grotius’ Escape

By Benjamin De Roover, translated by Laura Vroomen
27 October 2023 1 min. reading time Eureka?

Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors have taken inspiration from seventeenth-century artefacts from the Rijksmuseum. Looking at these objects, what eureka moments do they see? Benjamin De Roover was inspired by the chest of books in which Hugo de Groot escaped imprisonment in the early seventeenth century. ‘don’t let my bones rattle feebly like florins in this chest’

Benjamin De Roover Boekenkist van Hugo de Groot klein c Rijksmuseum Anonymous, Book chest of Hugo de Groot, ca. 1600 - ca. 1615
© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hugo Grotius’ Escape

Maria, my cunning island creature
the darkness in this chest makes my eyes bleed

the blood seeps into the cracks of the wood, sand
and black ants, they root round in my chest like Maurits’s iron fist

yet I dream oceans, once declared free in my book,
with hallucinatory sparkle, boundless like spirits

now that beyond rises the enigmatic red glow
of rampant eurekas

Maria, do you smell the smoke with a conqueror’s face?

together we dreamed a little dream of a golden world
now my body lies here cold and broken

I’m a dumb clay figure cast aside by God
my ideas, ghost ships cut adrift

Maria, sun, salvation
don’t let my bones rattle feebly like florins in this chest

rediscover me

your face, I see it, it is the petal
inside the manuscript
inside my boy wonder memory, darkening
fear speaks only in one’s mother tongue

Portret Benjamin De Roover c Marianne Hommersom

Benjamin De Roover

Benjamin De Roover (b. 1996) is a poet. He studied in Ghent and for many years belonged to Auw La, a student society for poetry and spoken word. His poems have been published in the likes of Samplekanon, Kluger Hans, Deus Ex Machina and Het Liegend Konijn. He is an editor at nY magazine.
photo by © Marianne Hommersom

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