A poem by the Dutch poet Menno Wigman

Beneath the asphalt

The heat was moaning like a dog

        and through the full, tall window sunlight

poured onto my Atlas of the World.

        I could find Appelscha and India,

America, New York and Wolvega

        and by the red square dot stood Stork.

The world, we were informed, was round –

        and down, straight down beneath our class

in the protection of the day

        New Zealand lay, where it was night.

That afternoon a zebra crossing was

        the place I stopped and read the asphalt’s cracks.

And underneath it’s dark, I thought,

        and saw two fishermen peer by a lamp.

The moon lit up an open safe.

        A looter buried all his swag .

Somewhere a pallid butcher drifted

        in his blood out of the shop.

What did I know of all night’s shady scenes

        when you were penniless and without friends?

I looked up once again – for all I knew

        for me alone the sun held sway,

born in a village time could not subdue

        in the infinity of May.