Another poem by the Dutch poet Martin Reints

Back to the beginning

In the midst of the present

that dwells in its day-to-dayness

to leave memory step by step in the lurch

to leave yourself behind among all those things

that are being worn down there

that with their wearing down allow day-to-dayness to exist

in the strange rhythm within which bookcases full of books

and offices full of office furniture

change into clouds of dust

into hot desert sand that shimmers in mirages

into wild rivers and into new housing estates

because it can’t be otherwise and because it happens to be so

to forget at ever-increasing speed:

what was it again?

and so to return to the beginning of thought

which actually isn’t yet thought itself.

To see a dossier of Reints poems plus interview on this poem, go to here