Another Dutch poem, this time by Arjen Duinker

xxiv

On the one hand there’s the thing.

On the other hand there’s the mystery.

More about the thing and the mystery I do not know.

How in the name of whatever,

How can I know anything more about them?

And this knowledge is small knowledge, I would add,

A small idea at most, small

In its consequences for time.

If on the one hand there’s the thing

And on the other hand the mystery,

The world is explicit.

The street is the street where I come across friends,

The flowers bloom as they must bloom, with blossoms,

The wind blows wherever it wishes,

And the lack of more knowledge

Than that on the one hand there’s the thing

And on the other hand the mystery

Is to me an inexhaustible source of joy.