On other occasions
we never listened
not to each other
not to the world
not to silence,
we only heard echoes
but now we both notice
the abyss sizzle
as we fall
louder and louder
knowing our landing
to be all that will echo.
Only that sizzling
on this last occasion
will be what mattered
more than the landing
more than the world
more than the echo.
All we have learnt
all what we know
all is a fraction
of a fall in an abyss,
when revelation
awaits at the end.
What others think of Amor:
“This is a beautiful book.
If I read it late in the evening it calms me and sends me to bed with my head in a good place.
Ina is a very talented poet.
I would recommend this book to all romantics everywhere.” DA on Facebook, 25 November 2013
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon UK
5.0 out of 5 stars Leaves the Reader Breathless and Breathing 25 Jan 2014
By DM Denton
Format:Kindle Edition
“Amor, a wandering progression of instinctively crafted poetry by Ina Schroders-Zeeders, is an intensely personal yet unselfconscious and certainly unashamed story of the author’s experience in love, creating a collection that is entertaining, imaginative, thought-provoking and full of visual and sensual detail. Exploring the questions of love and not really looking for answers, it hardly matters whether the 227 poems are about many different loves or kinds of love or many aspects of a few. Either way they seduce the reader into their immediacy and honesty with an almost hypnotic effect, blending one into another: words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters of waiting and hoping, looking and finding, coming and going, regret and remembrance.
As anyone who has followed Ina’s poetry through her blog knows, she is a prolific and eclectic writer. Her stories and reflections pour out of her ceaselessly, without any sense of urgency or pretension, as if she breathes them onto the page. I feel Ina would be a storyteller even if she wasn’t a writer – like the bards of old, she has a most natural need to `speak’ about her environment, encounters, travels, observations, emotions and memories just for the sake of sharing and encouraging others to do the same. Yet, it is obvious she is a seasoned poet: deliberate and skilled in her use of form and formlessness, knowing what works and doesn’t but never afraid to veer off the beaten path and try something new. As in life, so in art. She doesn’t let either pass by without making the most of what they have to offer for her own satisfaction and, happily, for that of her readers, too.
As in Ina’s first poetry book, ‘Veritas’, the poetry in ‘Amor’ is all the more remarkable because English is not her native language. And, once again, her kinship with the sea is evident. Even when it is not specifically mentioned, its movement, vastness and unpredictability are present in mood and outlook; these poems lapping at the shore, backwards and forwards, clinging and letting go, with low tides and high tides, winds blowing and everything stilled, the horizon seen but never completely defined.
This is a beautiful book, in its content and production. It tells a story that is circular rather than linear – well, many circles interconnecting like a chain-link, representing the cycles of beginnings and endings within the cycle of loving and living – that leaves the reader breathless yet still breathing and so wanting more.”
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful collection of poems about love and life by talented poet and novelist, Ina Schroders-Zeeders 17 Jan 2014
By chris m
Format:Paperback
“Ina Schroders-Zeeders is a very talented poet and novelist from The Netherlands. In her second book of English poetry, Amor, Ina takes us softly through a journey of love from the blissful beginnings, through the comfort and safety of familiarity, and then on toward melancholy partings, a journey through life. All of this is intertwined with her love of nature particularly the sea and such poems are sprinkled with the salty air of Terschelling, where she resides. Wisps of humour are also to be found scattered throughout this engaging book. This is most definitely one to be kept within daily reach, and without doubt will warm the hearts of all the readers who pick it up, a treasure to keep returning to over and over again.”
These 3 fine readers can’t be wrong? 🙂
Halfway during my walk
out of shadows and chaos
comes a sudden vision; so clear
is the sky, I should be able
to see God if he is in.
So grey was the sky then,
as we stood next to each other
saying goodbye at a funeral
that was covered
with black umbrella’s.
Only you and I were without shelter,
we got wet to the bone,
all I saw during the ceremony
was the brightness of flowers.
We seemed not to belong there.
And now half way on this walk
I remember clearly
how from the sky over the graveyard
a sunbeam shone on your hair then,
and how you wiped my tears away.
Had God been in, then,
it might have been a sign
that I was not left alone
but now all I have
is a vision of a memory.
I am halfway on my walk
knowing that no one else
has ever seen you
and chaos will soon
return in my life.
A swan you are, the way you curve
obnoxious though in your desire,
your wings burn red in morning fire as we
touch the other one in turn. The sunset
is the first thing that we see,
watching it together as it rises
out of the waves, new light to be,
embedding both of us with care
as promise for a future we don’t have.
Over the water your wings are spread,
your body now an arc above me,
sheltered from the world, from cold,
our sacred place, your voice,
that of a priest, seems old
and calm, and echoes in the temple,
over and over you say my name. I’m told
a swan again you’ll leave me
when I’m sleeping after dream.
De zwaan
Een zwaan ben je zoals je buigt,
maar hopeloos in je verlangen,
je vleugels branden rood in het ochtend vuur
als we de ander om beurten raken. De zon
is het eerste dat we zien,
we kijken samen hoe ze stijgt
uit de golven, pas geboren licht
dat ons met zorg omhult,
als een belofte voor een toekomst, niet de onze.
Boven het water zijn je vleugels gespreid,
je lichaam is nu een boog over mij,
beschut van de wereld, van kou
onze heilge plek, je stem,
die van een priester, klinkt oud
en kalm en echoot in de tempel,
steeds zeg je mijn naam. Men heeft me gezegd
dat je me als een zwaan zult verlaten
als ik in slaap ben na droom.
the waves tell me stories
about far away places
while my footprints are fading
while my life comes at end
the waves will keep moving
taking my story
to far away places
in endless whisper
for those who can hear
11 January 2014 Terschelling North Sea beach
Diane M Denton wrote this wonderful story with the history of her own family in mind, and the result is beautiful, a young girl’s discovery of literature intertwined with the problems of her family (they move a lot) and the friendship with her neighbours, two sisters.
As always, Diane manages to build up a certain suspense in her story that makes you want to know more about these characters, these lives which she touches only by fingertips, revealing just as much as needed for the story. Like in her historical novel “A House in Luccoli”, she catches the atmosphere
in her descriptions of earlier days so well. “The library next door” leaves you with a smile and an urge to read more about these people, their fascination with books and music, and what happened next…
Your words became dust
blowing over the land
finding sea. Fading,
life seemed at its best,
in the grey of Normandy,
as was the smell of dying flowers.
The breeze brings whispers
of our time together, while memories
linger over lavender fields.
Now the cliffs of France
are disappearing, as is
the smell of her blossom.
I shall look for your words
wherever I go, in every smile
will be reflexions of our days,
memories of blooming fields
and how we ran through the colours
and how we were one with the world.
About to crash
yet I know I’m stronger,
about to give in,
still I won’t.
I am still moving further on.
Never the one
to obey authority,
the guide already dead and gone,
I shall go my own way,
the path meandering.
What do I mean to others,
what am I to myself,
which path to explore first?
I take some detours, not
in a hurry to find my destination.
Over misty cliffs,
through deserts,
down the deep,
that’s the route
I plan to go.
About to crash
and lost at times,
so lost at times,
but never
bending for my fears.
On parallel roads the others
move into the same direction,
this voyage takes us through landscapes
we never knew about.
The flower’s there
where no one seeks her,
meeting me
where nothing grows
but faith that I can make it.
The place is called
the lost horizon,
that’s where I’ll be
if I achieve
to be myself in darker moments.
With waves her arms the sea is my mother,
she rocks me slowly when I am a child,
when I disobey her her senses go wild
and she keeps me away from the world.
When I love, my mother approaches
on the beach she observes and approves,
when we hug, she reclines in her moves
to leave us alone during neap tide and ebb.
With my children about to be born,
she hugged me tender and whispered a name,
every time as I called her, she came
giving strength in the rhythm she rocked me.
When I die I shall walk through the waves
finding arms that for ever will hold me
as my mother is always the sea
always there to look after me well.
In the universe of our imagination
the past was always the beginning of the future
and there is no dwelling in the moment that we live.
If we could live anywhere else
but in the moment,
the future sounds fine to me.
If we only live for the now,
our future is hopeless.
Next generations don’t need our garbage.
I refuse to live in the moment 🙂
Moving on
The Balance
National Poetry Writing Month 2012
Ina 
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