Another Decade, Hudson River

then      we turn our backs to the symbols

sit into      another river
a dark blue corner of a dark blue room

when hearing is blacker      ten years the jetty has leaned whispering against water
in the little park      ten years the tender green accordion of trees has played
children charging down the April to April steps

clouds charging down their reflection      water now bright now dark
and squirrel’s pulped organs open
a blood-red photo album      reality stings even through glass
even a soaked hand couldn’t touch the lined-up days

river      a blank textbook hanging from the past window
questioning now only the single remaining page      no need to learn vagrancy
weariness      tethered to a water bird flying low
the spinning whirlpool      exit for all the world’s skyscrapers
flee      flee to plastic flowers      no need to learn vanishing

Hudson just like a name formed by the sound of the wind
lamplight’s passing glance      just like ghost fire hidden in human bodies
switched on      just like a notch blown away at will
a rosy notch twilight recorded on the sky
whoever has understood it      will live into a poem
unending past events

room in a room      filled with water of a decade
corner in a corner      painting the dark blue of distance
the way we sit forever turning our backs on the ocean
listening to the waves shatter      rubble savagely smashing a decade
telephone lines broken      cries for help blindly float through a decade
river the colour of forgetting      can’t forget
each day      two hands full of crimson steel tumbling straight down

no need to learn burning      handful of ash fixed in
tight-shut eyes      moon like a scooped-out pip
singing contralto      requiem for every river valley
every place that flows away appears each time after dying
banks paved underfoot      have been thousands of times removed
a pale fishbone always has another end glowing with phosphorescent light
endurance      to slap a lifetime’s final
farewell      pushing out tonight again

with the look of a room thrust into the universe
survey how much this sunken ship could further sink
our backs turned to zero drawn as the horizon
how much farther it migrates      then crazy blue is blue enough to be black
in a lost accent      Hudson pressed against
a bluestone wellhead buried at the gate of an ancient Chinese village
destruction touches its own diameter of one day
one drop      gathers snow left for us
with the beauty of survivors and the cruelty of survivors

NOG EENS TIEN JAAR, DE RIVIER DE HUDSON