Hendrik Marsman - famous poem about Holland

 

Memory of Holland

Thinking of Holland

I see wide rivers slowly

flowing through endless

low-lying land,

inconceivably

gossamer poplars

on the horizon

in wispish ranks;

and in the expanses of

space, sunken farmsteads

randomly strewn over

flat countryside,

tree-clusters, hamlets,

truncated steeples,

churches and elm trees

in a net flung wide.

The sky there hangs low

and the sun slowly stifles

in vapours where multiple

greys become blurred,

and in every far corner

the voice of the water

with its countless disasters

is feared and is heard.