For Anouchka and René Notenboom

St. Albans Grand Steeple Chase charged in here
Under trees that are not the living ones
On Singraven's waterside and in the autumnal woods.
It is not eighteen thirty-two and it is not March.

Lamp with seven ears of copper corn
Forged in the Rococo period, its flowers
Of copper, completely oblivious to the puff ball
that gushes swarms of racing cyclists.

Light hardened with the craquelure of the year
shivers through clouds, duckweed; autumn crocus.
Long live the flights of swans, long live the streams.

The watermill's wheel groans like wooden steps.
Hop cones blanch as greenish-yellow as the eighteenth century.
Soon September rains will calmly erase the view.

Translation: 2013, Michele Hutchison