Three actual bridges - one French, two Dutch. Romance > WYSIWYG

THE MIRABEAU BRIDGE

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
                And all our loves
        Why does it make so plain
That any joy must always follow pain
        Let the night come the hour sound clear
        The days all pass I’m still here

Our hands intertwined let’s stay face to face
                While far below
        The bridge of our arms strays
The languid wave of each endless gaze

        Let the night come the hour sound clear
        The days all pass I’m still here

Our love drifts away like these waters flow
                Love drifts away
        And our lives are so slow
With Hope more violent than we could know
        Let the night come the hour sound clear
        The days all pass I’m still here.

The days and weeks pass in a ceaseless train
                But no past time
        Or past love comes again
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
        Let the night come the hour sound clear
        The days all pass I’m still here.

Guillaume Apollinaire

'THE OLD LADY'

I went to Bommel just to see the bridge.

I saw the new bridge. Two opposing shores

that shunned each other seemingly before

are neighbours once again. A grassy verge

I lay on, tea consumed, for some ten minutes

my head filled with the landscape far and wide –

when from that endlessness on every side

this voice came, and my ears resounded with it.

It was a woman. And the boat she steered

was passing downstream through the bridge quite slowly.

She stood there at the helm, alone on deck,

and what she sang were hymns, I now could hear.

Oh, I thought, oh, were mother there instead.

Praise God she sang, His hand shall safely hold thee.

Martinus Nijhoff

TWO FAR SIDES

Each bridge a bridge unless that bridge should be

confused regarding which is this side and

which that. For what you see is what you see.

The water flows. And what else could it stand

for really than just flowing water. Right?

For God the past and future are nowhere.

A woman at the helm’s a frequent sight.

The bridge a bridge, what’s there is what is there.

Here on this side we stand just where we stand

and gaze at ships that onward gently glide,

travelling to that strange and distant land

where in our thoughts so often we would find

ourselves on what is called the other side

and stare so fixedly that we go blind.

Ronald Ohlsen
(dedicated to the poet Gerrit Krol, who has had a bridge in Groningen named after him, officially opened on 8 July 2005)