叙事诗(“Awater“,选自第三本诗集<<Nieuwe gedichten>> (New Poems, 1934),也是他最为重要的两部作品之一（另一部是 Het uur U (H-Hour)])及几首短诗(荷-英对照)

The Wanderer
　　 
　　 My lonely life wanders in the streets,
　　 Along the countryside or the walls of the room.
　　 No blood flows anymore in my dead hands,
　　 Silenced, my heart has let deed die away.
　　 
　　 Cloister monk out of the time of the Carolines,
　　 I sit with a serious Flemish face by the window;
　　 I see people go their way on the sunny fields,
　　 And hear seamen singing along the canals.
　　 
　　 Artist out of the time of the Renaissance,
　　 I draw at night the smile of a beautiful woman
　　 Or bend myself over a mirror and observe
　　 The considerable shine of my very own eyes.
　　 
　　 A poet out of the time of Baudelaire,
　　 By day among books, at night in a café,
　　 I curse my love and dance like Salome.
　　 The world has its opulence and its misery.
　　 
　　 I am a spectator looking out from a high tower,
　　 A space divides me from the rest of the world,
　　 That I see as small and as very far away
　　 And that I cannot touch and cannot hear.
　　 
　　 Once my hands no longer moved to act,
　　 My eyes saw all the many things clearly:
　　 A trail of images I saw as they passed me by,
　　 Silent pathwork-play without perspective.
　　 
　　 (all tr. Cliff Crego) 
　　 英译:
　　 
　　 The Mother the Woman
　　 
　　 I went to Bommel to see the bridge.
　　 I saw the new bridge. Two opposite sides
　　 that in the past appeared to avoid each other,
　　 are again neighbors. In but the few moments
　　 
　　 that I lay there, in the grass, drank my tea,
　　 my head full of the landscape far and wide—
　　 in the middle of this endlessness, from nowhere, 
　　 I heard a voice that sounded in my ears.
　　 
　　 It was a woman. The ship that she steered 
　　 came slowly downstream running under the bridge.
　　 She was alone on deck, she stood next to the rudder,
　　 
　　 from what she sang I heard that they were psalms.
　　 O, I thought, o, that there was my mother sailing.
　　 Praise God, she sang, His hand will care for you.
　　 英译:
　　 The Supper
　　 
　　 The table fell quiet. It was as if bread and wine
　　 Were struck from the grip of our hands.
　　 The candleflame fluttered low as it burned
　　 And a window sprang open towards a darkening canal.
　　 
　　 As water tumbled about the land in the night
　　 Under the house; we felt how a great
　　 Wave took hold of us, how the wings of the
　　 Ship of time carried us on towards death.
　　 
　　 There was no place for us to hide together:
　　 A person, alone, sees his black aloneness
　　 More deeply reflected in the eyes of another—
　　 
　　 But as the winds cry against the roofs,
　　 Forget, forget where for our weak heart screams,
　　 Laugh and smash the glasses one against the other. 

英译:
　　 The End
　　 
　　 Strange pizzicato of distant guitars,
　　 We had just heard the birds singing outside—
　　 The sun pushed its way through the cracks
　　 of the heavy curtains in the quiet room.
　　 
　　 But our face and all the things still hung
　　 With the tired light of the chandeliers—
　　 And between us, as great ghosts, moved
　　 A craziness of words, a hopelessness of gestures.
　　 
　　 This was the end of the last night.
　　 The sun fell straight through the window. I leaned
　　 My forehead against the glass—you, behind me, /
　　 shivered.
　　 
　　 What existed between us, has been killed.
　　 Let＇s not think anymore about what it was.
　　 God has done with us what he wanted.

英译:
　　 
　　 Clown
　　 
　　 With blue-paper arrows on my cheeks
　　 And a yellow star stuck to my head,
　　 I stay, as a monkey takes my hand,
　　 hanging upside-down on a balancing beam.
　　 
　　 My master wants to make the world happy,
　　 —“Satan＇s Apostle“ I＇m called by my sign—
　　 And the people, a procession of mad pilgrims,
　　 are sent here, and I am to entertain them.
　　 
　　 They laugh at everything my craziness does,
　　 I play dog, play human, play elephant:
　　 I bark, I cry, I dig around with my snout—
　　 
　　 Late at night the tent empties itself:
　　 On the plain, where the lanterns are burning,
　　 I lean against a pole, and call my deeds good.

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   Martinus Nijhoff, (b. April 20, 1894, The Hague—d. Jan. 26, 1953, The Hague), greatest Dutch poet of his generation, who achieved not only an intensely original imagery but also an astounding command of poetic technique.
　　
　　In his first volume, De wandelaar (1916; “The Wanderer”), his negative feelings of isolation and noninvolvement are symbolized in wildly grotesque figures, and the image of the dance of death is prevalent. The only solution to this spiritual frustration is suicide, as enacted in the short verse drama Pierrot aan de lantaarn (1918; “Pierrot at the Lamppost”). The demonic element is again apparent in his second volume, Vormen (1924; “Forms”), which also reveals Nijhoff ’s realistic, direct approach to Christianity in, for example, “De soldaat die Jezus kruisigde” (“The Soldier Whom Jesus Crucified”).
　　
　　Nijhoff ’s best volume, Nieuwe gedichten (1934; “New Poems”), shows a spiritual rebirth, an affirmation of the richness of earthly existence, which is most apparent in the optimism of the magnificent “Awater.” This tale of a mythical, biblical character set in a sober modern townscape combines a sensitive use of colloquialism with extreme virtuosity of form.
　　
　　“Awater” and Het uur U (1942; “U-Hour”), the story of a stranger’s shattering effect on a self-satisfied community, firmly establish Nijhoff as one of Europe’s foremost 20th-century poets.