Bergen op Zoom

A catholic stroll
on a heathen night through
autumn streets of the old town
where everything’s in conversion:

Bulwark, Holy Virgin Street, Sluice Gate.
Silhouettes of heavy roofs.
The belly full of fallen leaves.
Gaslight without depth.

No sounds more oppressive
than the drizzle of the fog
and the peak of the umbrella
that between the cobbles

voluptuously in the drenched
earthen stanzas
stabs
.



Albert Hagenaars (original text in Dutch) & Catherine East (translation)
From the bilingual collection ‘Spertijd’ / ‘Curfew’, 2000.
Publisher WEL, Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands