--Menno Wigman (trans. Judith Wilkinson)
The heat was moaning like a dog
and through the tall window sunlight
splashed down on my atlas of the world.
I knew Appelscha and India,
America, New York and Wolvega
and that red dot was Stork.
The world, we learned, was round,
and deep beneath our classroom,
far down, under the lee of day,
New Zealand lay, and night.
That afternoon, at a crossing,
I noticed cracks in the road.
I thought: beneath the asphalt lies the dark
and saw two fishermen peering by a lamp.
The moon shone on an open safe.
A plunderer was burying his loot.
Somewhere a pale butcher floated
out of his shop in his own blood.
What did I know about the tricks of night,
when you were penniless and without friends.
I looked up at the sky – for all I knew
the sun existed just for me,
born in a village time could not destroy,
in the infinity of May.
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