Blazing past a pale-blue wrack of cloud
the angel Gabriel probably
in search of a place to descend
to whisper into someone's ear. Sokurov
the film director, lazy visionary:

a young, pallid, absent-mindedly peering bodyguard
suddenly catches sight of his Führer
hastily standing up from behind a boulder
has most likely taken a dump
looking round nervously rubs
his hands clean with snow.

The woman who first espied the angel
howled like a lunatic, thus driving off
the angel, unwittingly. The woman froze.
She froze.
But not as punishment.

The astonishment on the pallid face of the boy,
his Führer hastening toward the rest of his company
having a copious picnic further on, against a background
of snow-covered mountain tops, wisps of fog and gorges.

Translation: 2005, Willem Groenewegen