A Translation

Wow. This is the best thing I've read in about a week.
Is the original language German?

Excellent poem, excellent translation. Has a nice flow to it.


I'm not sure, but it looks like Dutch. Van Eyck is a Dutch name.

Sure it's dutch, that's my native language. Thanks for your compliments .

I heard it half a life time ago but that reminds me what is a life time. Death has no friends but we all must welcome his embrace.

W. Somerset Maugham: "The Appointment in Samarra", 1933 Death speaks:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

This is a parable about fatalism. No matter what the servant did to avoid it, he was going to die.

Yes, this is very interesting. The first publication of Van Eyck's poem dates from 1926. Recent investigation shows that it's an almost exact replica of a poem to be found in the novel "Le Grand Ecart" by Jean Cocteau (1923), made known to Van Eyck by another dutch poet Hendrik Marsman. But I wonder what was the source for Cocteau? This little morality must have been around for quite awhile in the East...

sounds like a sufi story to me...hence the reference to persia and baghdad
they have a way of being funny and frightening at the same time

did you mean to post this in thanatopsis?

Yes, perhaps that would have been better. But I wanted to state that translations are also a form of creative writing. My following translations will be in Thanatopsis.

ah i see-but that would be hard to appreciate to someone who doesnt understand both the languages. i agree with you though-i thought creative writing was meant for things the poster wrote, that was why i asked, but i see what you mean.