Poem by the Dutch writer Pieter Boskma

Confiscation

Now that for half a century I’ve walked this masterly earth,

full of wonder and amazement and with the strong idea

that once that once that once I may just grasp my every

step and all the words I’ve written, and all that I have felt

will come together for good to form an adage of love,

now the time comes for me to become a landscape

and be the animal within it that simply gazes all around

since everywhere the beautiful and everywhere the good

extend equally like a tremor in the grass,

and then, softly whining with happiness, that parts

the evening clouds for a sip of light, for it wants no

further darkness, no laboured efforts to conceive things

other than what, in the depths of their being, they – since

the beginning, hovering over dark waters – have always been.