Leo Vroman  April 10, 1915 – February 22, 2014
This Dutch poet, illustrator and scientist died yesterday in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 98.

He lived in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) from 1940 to 1945 and was a POW of the Japanese on Java and in Japan. After the capitulation of Japan, he moved to the US and became a hematology researcher.
Because of this background and the fact that his wife was born in the Dutch East Indies, much of his poetry has a direct connection to Indonesia.

I emigrated from the Netherlands to the United States in 1957, travelling with a light heart but with a heavy load. My father had made me a strong wood crate to carry all my books, many of them contemporary poetry from Bertus Aafjes to Jan Wit (Dutch poets of that time). Naturaly also L. Vroman: “Gedichten” (“Poems”) and “Gedichten – Vroegere en Latere” (“Poems – Early and Later”). I have slowly shed many of my Dutch books but I still have the two of L. Vroman. I don’t read them frequently anymore and they have browned along the edges, but they remain among my most prized possessions. When I do pick them up, my fingers automatically go to his poems “Borstvogel” and “Soember Brantas” as they remind me most of my long-lost youth in the place where I was born.

I plan to quote his poem “Vrede”  (“Peace”) in the introduction of my memoir telling my experiences in concentration camps for women and children on Java under the Japanese during WW2 , in both the original Dutch and the English translation. I can’t read either version without getting tears in my eyes, but for some reason, the English reaches deeper into my heart:

Peace

Come tell me after all these years
your tales about the end of war
tell me a thousand times or more
and every time I’ll be in tears.

Leo Vroman 1964

Vrede

Kom vanavond met verhalen
hoe de oorlog is verdwenen,
en herhaal ze honderd malen:
alle malen zal ik wenen.

Leo Vroman 1957

For a few years I lived in Arlington, Texas, very near Fort Worth but I never had the courage to make contact with Leo Vroman because he was of a generation right between my father and me. I probably should have ……

Thank you, Leo Vroman, for the joy of your poetry and drawings.