Old fortune (not for sale)
in old rooms. Isn't that wonderful?

We already knew that the point of experience
is memory, and that if need be one may
omit the experience itself,

but we seldom saw it so clearly.
You closed the door, looked at me with velvet eyes,
shining smooth with age,
and behind the door they kept on dying,

like animals, like madmen, like lemmings,
like beached sperm whales, like it was nothing,
like we hadn't closed the door a long time before.

Translation: 2004, Willem Groenewegen