There is a dike of silence,
a wall of
smoke on the rain today
in the
Netherlands.
I'm on the
other side of the Ocean,
I still
remember you…
my little
muse from the North,
my dear
Amsterdam.
When I toured
your narrow streets
near the Oude
Kerk,
you rejoiced
me with oblong windows,
with your
naive elegance of ancient city
and those
floating houses with flowers.
Your
buildings, big reeds swaying in the time,
protected me
from the coldness of the moderns.
You gave me
company.
You gave to
my brothers, the swans;
you
procreated them so I would not feel alone.
I wandered
with them with all my poetry,
swimming on
elegant white feathers,
and traveled
with our closed eyes
along your
channels.
I found love
in Spring,
or in the invernal
ice of the Amstel.
I traversed
your countless veins,
frosty of dreams
and navigators.
This, I tell
you, my dear Amsterdam,
to realize
yourself that this life without poets
it´s nothing
more than a birth and death of cells
on boats and
bicycles.
Life without
poets is nothing more
than a ship of
old wood sailing in the void.
Worship not
only the brush of Vincent
and
Rembrandt; worship the verses of
Joost van den
Vondel.
This life without
the poets' prized voice
becomes a
little fistful of dust,
a field of
black tulips, forgotten,
with no one
who sings to them
so they can
dance again under the sun.
I will walk
barefoot on your northern beaches
again, dear
Amsterdam
your daughters
will hug me as they used to do
and I will
make a deal again with the Sea.
