We carried a part of your life outside.
Piling up on the platform all you'd gathered
under our roof. It lay in ropes, in piles,
blindfolded in boxes: moving as much as possible

at once to a larger city where you'd live in smaller
rooms with stranger folk. No longer with us.
You said you'd often return. I knew how years
before I'd promised the same while lugging boxes,

but I saw the flicker of another life in your eyes,
in wider lanes with taller buildings, trees and terraces
in many languages. The golden years of conquest. Time
for us to empty out, let go, which always takes some doing.

We'd have to get by with less of you.

Translation: Willem Groenewegen, 2010.