Wednesday 10 March 2010

Poem by the Dutch writer Alfred Schaffer


THEORY AND PRACTICE

What’s right lies in the middle, graspable apparently, like
a punctured football in a pond, even with a stick you can’t

quite reach, a false start will make everything go haywire,
the risks are up to you. What can happen to us, what

is it we can’t see? The hands are motionless, or don’t we want
to know just how we’re parting with these precious minutes?

It’s always hard to start, each start is a disturbance of some rest,
an unsighted challenge, a sheer rock face, you climb and climb

until the pattern that you left makes you feel giddy, a jumble of
colours. And there you stand. Your hunch was right, that much is clear.

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