There is also salt in the sea but the salt in the ground is more costly.
We dig until digging has become second nature to us,
underground. (Dive in as laboriously as possible,
that's what we do, and always come up spluttering,
constantly threatening not to come up.)

We want the deep, we want the heavy, we want the dark.
But we bring along dependable lamps
and due to our essential lightness we always
come back up. We're not as simple souls as all that.
(We of all people aren't such simple souls.) We are oysters.

Translation: 2006, Willem Groenewegen