Wild Surf

Here you see my “wild surf” photo, which I dedicate to the memory of my master J.B. Charles. As a poet he wrote many sea poems of which I will here translate one fragment.
Charles was the “nom de plume” of the Dutch resistance fighter and criminologist Dr. Willem Hendrik Nagel. Already as a young high school pupil our French teacher - who also had taken part in the resistance - told us about the anti-fascist writings of Charles. So even before I eagerly followed his classes in integrated criminology, I had read his essays and poems. To distinguish ourselves in art and science, law and literature, that was the universalistic ambition of the happy few among his admiring students.

From: A Suite of the Sea by J.B. Charles

Thank, Lord Jesus, for the Sea,
I dream in it and fight with it
And she streams goody through my being.
Thank Lord Jesus for the sea.

The green sea is my girl friend,
I rest with her and play therein,
and for my fearless feet, grounded
on the farthest stable edge,
this brittle yellow sugar sand of the beach,
she washes ashore, the sweet gifts
of which the salty odour reminds me her,
her and so many things included:
the seaweed, a spanish bottle and shells
wherein the mermaid and eternity
are singing due voci.

(Translated from the Dutch by TynvdB/131114)