Paul van Ostaijen


Young Landscape

So the two stand almost motionless in the meadow
the girl who hangs straight down on a rope from heaven
puts her long hand on the long straight line of the goat
that bears the earth on its tiny feet inversely
Against her white-and-black checked smock
the girl — in the whimsy of
my solitude I call het Ursula
holds a poppy high

There are no words as graceful
as the rings in the zebu horns
as tanned by time as a zebu hide
shock inside of you their value bare
Such words I'd like to garner to a sheaf
for the girl with the goat

Across the edges of my hands
my hands
feel for my hands
incessantly
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