I
Shadows of trees on the corn.
Opposite the station a bridge with a loose step.
A boy skateboards through an optician’s that’s closing.
Tubes under letterboxes for putting rolled-up papers in.
A wine merchant’s full of boxes.
Under the bridge coloured neon lights shine on the water.
Above station height the cars drive down the road.
II
A girl paints in a shop window in an arcade.
She steps out of the window, through the door into the arcade and turns to the
window takes a few steps back detaches herself and looks.
On separate strips of paper are two trees. Their branches bend towards the glass.
Their leaves threaten to fall.
She walks back into the window gets the spray can shakes it masks the strips with tape.
Teenagers kiss at the entrance to the arcade.
III
Coal blocks a revolving door at the entrance to a factory
on top of the walls rolls of barbed wire circle.
A fox crosses the deserted site, keeps its tail
low to the ground, stops and looks round
walks onto the factory shop floor.
Electric cables stick up through the pavement.
From a tap that’s burs open water shoots into the air.
For a moment there’s a rainbow above the canal.
IV
Rubbish on a boat.
Stones on a boat.
Concrete sections on a barge, shipped down the river.
A dam in the river, a gangway with ropes climbing up.
Birds on the quay.
Grabs that release stones on the factory floor.
A bridge as narrow as a pipe, with seagulls at regular intervals
hunched like white buds.
V
The buses, the chip stalls, the karaoke bars, the periphery, the patrolling police, wooden balcony railings, les traiteurs chinois, the road works, the renovations, the boarded-up windows, the shop windows painted white, the mounds of coal, the hairdressing salons, the tattoos, the piercings, the alleys between back gardens, the cemeteries, the allotments, the Art Nouveau, the trees, the diggers, the brick houses, the benches, the stained glass, the signs, the factory floors, the net curtains, the fire brigade with sirens, the markets, the Cameroons, the Italians, the petrol stations, the slopes, the front gardens, the cargo boats, the nets under crumbling balconies, the hospitals, the department stores, the funeral parlours, the pistes de boules, the betting arcades, the sports fields, the aircraft climbing, the stewardesses at the bus stop.
VI
Birds fly in turn into the metro station
and perch on the sign with the name of the station
A metro goes to a pointed slag heap, doesn’t
skirt round it, goes right through it.
The stairs from a metro stop
surface in a library garden.
Meadows in town with trees round the edge.
A man leaves his house
to sit outside in his car.
A woman opens her front door holding
a painting with cows in it.
VII
A taxi driver who in his first day
drives the endless suburbs. Spires
telegraph poles, transmitter masts
sticking out above the hill.
Drives, sees endless sky.
A row of small houses in front of row of tall trees.
A row of small houses along the railway line.
A horse writhing on its back gets up
when someone approaches.
A birdcage as big as a window.
A man delivers restaurant brochures.
VIII
A woman at the stop holds her hands
on her hips under her belt.
On the roundabouts there are cartoon characters.
In the laundrette the radio sounds.
The panelling in the bars, the embossed wallpaper.
A man starts combing a woman’s hair at the bar.
People who come in shake everyone’s hand.
A woman gets up to check
whether there are any crumbs on her seat.
The sloping street in the dusk.
Reflecting TV pictures in the windows.
IX
Shadow of a train carriage on the corn.
In a sheep meadow there are geese.
Eaves by the railway painted in different colours.
A plastic rainwater butt with a wood motif.
Fallow land by the river. Signs with place names for the boats.
At a roundabout a train carriage on a length of track.
Molehills on the lawn in front of a castle.
A woman sits down in front of her house
so as she eats she can look out over the valley.
X
At the Beaux-Arts the stick-on letters are replaced
by next week’s programme.
A woman says that people love the factory where they work
it goes very deep, it’s not like an office job.
The glow of the lights in a football stadium.
The cobbles on the courtyard of a barracks.
In the alley beside the metro is a pulley car.
The squeaking of the panels in the reversible billboards.
The road surface bulges. The people in the street say hello.
Translated from Dutch by Paul Vincent
Paul Vincent studied at Cambridge and Amsterdam, and after teaching Dutch at the University of London for over twenty years became a full-time translator in 1989. Since then he has published a wide variety of translated poetry, non-fiction and fiction, including work by Achterberg, Claus, Couperus, Elsschot, Jellema, Mulisch, De Moor and Van den Brink. He is a member of the Society of Dutch Literature in Leiden.
