The sun always shines brightly
on the square with public housing
shopping plaza neighbourhood centre a fun cafe
the grass freshly trimmed like the people
eternally young families
in the built-up zone an architect’s dream
where the future is secured

but this century can no longer be invented
how often have I heard
the roar of new housing collapsing
present and future are definitely done for
goodbye all certainties
we’ll live in makeshift abodes
when you’re here I’m there
and we’ll greet each other in passing
with American niceties

Young woman with a gold headscarf
strange black swan rarely spotted
in the ice-hole of this restaurant

like me she’s writing zealously
in the intervals between courses
it feels like a competition

I don’t dare speak to her
once it would have been out of shyness
now it’s my age

when she looks up I look down
and suddenly – that’s timing! – she’s gone
and I’m alone with a mirage

It’s the same old story:
he’s feeling bored
do I have to listen to this?
even the reader somewhere in my head
turns away in disgust
getting bored that’s something for when you’re fourteen
then you’ve a right to boredom
you can even feel despair

now he’s eighty
life has deprived him of that right
he is no longer allowed the luxury of idleness
in this world
where even the most pathetic bamboo flute
played by the poorest little garbage-scavenger
still makes music

The day before yesterday there was war
yesterday was the same
and it’s still war in my time
time that’s not just mine

money prowls around the world
and finances itself with war

war may not speak its name
it’s called defence

poetry is the brushwood
in which I’ll hide
when the soldiers come
in their screaming tanks

Corpses look carefully arranged
in every shade of black and white

the form as it were exposes them
style and structure

on the pavement a functional splash of blood
the composition of incipient decay

sublime statement
auctioned at Christie’s

five to seven thousand
dollars

1.
Rain is falling on the dykes:
a great day for the nation

2.
A morning of rain
full of helpless grief
that left me with a dream
that’s now a poem about emptiness
no trace of human life
above the tree line
the summit of the icy mountain
starved of feeling
trail of cloud evaporating
in the hard blue sky
a final breath
gone in the twinkle of an eye

3.
He spent his last days in tram 5
felt a little indisposed
as he passed the Rijksmuseum
recovered before the Concertgebouw
but was finally laid low
in the supermarket next to the Stedelijk Museum
with a jar of sambal in his hand

The arrangement was he should bring something back
on his return
some souvenir a symbol a proof
something to make up for his absence
the Eiffel Tower on a little chain
a Red Indian’s feather a fur cap a piece of pottery
an uncut diamond desert sand in a trouser turn-up
or a strange song on his lips

only then did they reluctantly let him go
reluctantly
did he understand?

he promised it at once
anything to get away from them
just managed to miss a farewell party
friends and family waving goodbye
a hired band or whatever else they’d thought up

he set off in the dead of night
without provisions or compass
just started walking goodbye stars goodbye earth
goodbye breath goodbye silence for ever

If I take good care of myself
that’s what she asks me in the café
where I’m sipping my drink

I nod eagerly
that’s something you must do
when you’re old

and point to the contents of my shopping bag
a takeaway dinner of sausage and kale
the evening papers full of the world’s squabbles
a cigarette carton like pistols in wartime
and a bottle of wine from Portugal
‘Forgotten Field’ that’s its name
never entered in the land register
I’ll have to go there some day

Can you round off your speech please
your time’s up
I just wanted to say
keep it short then
how she came to me that evening
in that other city where I was living aimlessly
how she’d give anything
to visit me that evening
that dark blue evening
soft rain in golden lamplight
falling on the tarmac
how we lay down together
and love that big word
I can’t find any other for
folded us in timelessness
since then the ticking clock of restlessness
I often went off
but
and that’s what I wanted to say
I never left her any more
you’ve made your point

When I was little
I wore a sailor suit
my mother took me
to the pond in the woods
I let my sailboat float
on the end of a piece of string
there was a murmur in the trees
the wind blew from the sea

Many ports of call later
and my mother is dead
never since have I found
an anchorage so secure