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Meliza de Vries: Grown-Up

By Meliza de Vries, translated by Paul Vincent
9 February 2020 1 min. reading time Friday Verses

This week’s Friday Verses are written by Meliza de Vries. We translated Volwassen (Grown-up). This poem was first published in Dutch in Het Liegend Konijn, a magazine for contemporary Dutch-language poetry.

Meliza de Vries (b. 1982, Nugepola, Sri Lanka) writes and illustrates. Her poems have appeared in various (online) literary magazines. She has read her poetry during Dichters in de Prinsentuin (Poets in the Prinsentuin) and Onbederf’lijk Vers (Undying Verse), and toured Belgium and the Netherlands with the Poetry Bus.

Grown-Up

In this village bikes are never pinched
one day you’re shocked by your stabilisers.

Growing up goes faster if you are robbed
of marbles, graphs, cases in Latin

and later: a bar stool, the number of gin and tonics,
sentences to a stranger.

Sunday is a day without commas:
finite verb forms join seamlessly.

You’ve lost the language of yesterday, a name of a stranger,
half a bag of marbles and are again shocked by your stabilisers.

(Dutch version below the photo)

Meliza de Vries 20 Meliza de Vries

Volwassen

In dit dorp wordt nooit een fiets gejat
op een dag schrik je van je zijwieltjes.

Volwassen worden gaat sneller als je wordt beroofd
van knikkers, grafieken, naamvallen in Latijn

en later: een barkruk, het aantal gin-tonics,
zinnen aan een vreemde.

Zondag is een dag zonder komma’s:
persoonsvormen sluiten naadloos aan.

Je bent de taal van gister kwijt, een naam van een vreemde,
een halve knikkerzak en schrikt weer van je zijwieltjes.

Meliza de Vries 20

Meliza de Vries

poet

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