you could go for some kind of poetic oracling
but after a while you’re probably bored with it
in a church in Lisbon
I lit an electric light
after three hours time was up
whether she had noticed?
in the meantime I started praying
like a buzzard
hanging above his shadow
and the haunted words
were not surprisingly different
I did not isolate her to the silent ones
somewhere in a hotel room with ocean view
I did not cathedral her into a Madonna long neck
it became a sort of monologue by two people
in which we promised that – with our backs
stretched out in the wet spring grass –
we would still look at the clouds
and any kind of distance
we would smooth over
Translation: Sytse Jansma & Janneke Spoelstra