Poem written by the Dutch poet Hans Tentije about a painting by Rembrandt

Rembrandt van Rijn – Portrait of Dr. Ephraim Bueno

ON VLOOYENBURG

‘So much has remained unwritten, so much too

that is impossible to describe because it stays

hidden to everyone for ever,’ he thinks

having shut the outer door behind him and placed

his one foot on the bottom step

in the shrouded ground-floor flat

he feels how his heart skips a beat and the blood

drains from his cheeks, catching

his breath for that one moment

just then there was, with the glittering brocades of sky

above the Leprozengracht, the loveliest part

of Vlooyenburg surely, his island in the Amstel, as never

so sharply before the feeling of being

both stranger and resident –

the cuff round the wrist of his hand

with which he grips the banisters and the collar

a flecked white, the darkness almost

swallows up the black of his top hat

still he stays motionless, his gentle, melancholy

eyes glisten as those of one who’s seen all the

pain and all sorrow of the world but nonetheless

is fond of life and gains consolation from

the ancient scriptures, from the psalms –

‘…light, yes, would dying seem to me if I knew

myself to be immortal…’