Arjen Duinker

1956 / Delft

PIECE OF PAPER

The purple butterfly is full of meaning.
The passionate flower slightly less.
The grass has outgrown its meaning.
I'm left without.

Look, there goes the man whose neighbour we share.
Half five, on the way to the meeting place
For members of the unreal society:
They who live forever.

He runs, shaking his bulging head,
Runs on a mixture of prehistoric oil
And oblivion from thirteen hundred.
But he loses a piece of red paper.

It falls, no, whirls from his trousers.
It is a scent, without rest, without weight,
It whirls, starts to tumble,
Gallops after his trousers.

Butterfly, flower, grass, me,
We watch the piece of paper go
With varying kinds of awe.
The night becomes tangible.
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