Winter

And then you told me how you lost your mind
That time in winter when the walls were closing round you
And your eyes said how you cried, alone, and wished to die
But could not find a way

And when I left the world had changed
I cried inside and thought as children do
That you were far too pure too beautiful to ever fall
Beneath the darkness of a lonely mind

And so I learned that everything is tainted by the night
That even if your eyes are bright and smiling
You can walk into the prison-house of death
And innocently break into a thousand lonely stars

Madrid

The white-flecked birds search for the sea.

You said there was a way

to make the summer last

and that the trees were realer than the sunlight.

We walked in silence past the waving crowd,

haunted by the thoughts

and words we didn’t say.

Look up, the smoke is twisting into clouds.

                This is no place for birds

                or whispered signs of love.

A frozen thought is melting into rain;

I looked for you in faded autumn dreams

                and offices of snow.

                These words are not my own.

Avond

De golven sloegen op het strand
En in de verte klonk een lied
Hij nam de avond bij de hand
En liep voorbij een oud verdriet

Love

Ah but dear father when the smile breaks across her face it is spring again. It is a breeze of fresh air in the face, a cold glass of wine on a sultry summer evening, a music of flowers and waves and you feel the world drift away. 

And sometimes when I watch her I see myself again, a boy walking along a mountain-path in the high Pyrenees, face to face with the mystery of love for the first time and never blinking.

And I know this moment is the beginning of my life and its end, the sun shining down, the mountain thyme round my feet, my heart in a paradise that wil never fade. 

Ah be sure I know all you speak of. But it is not life. It is a mad dream, a veil thrown across our eyes by a jaelous god, a mist that drifts down over life but it comes from a different world and it can never come to good in this. 

You will see when it passes, and you shrink back from the ugliness of this world, the small/mindedness of people, the emptiness of life. Better never to have seen the vision. 

For is it not said, that he who looks into the sun shall be blind and mad ere long?

Ah but is it not also said, that he who never sees the light shall never recognize the sun when it rises in the depths of his heart?

Hoop

En dat als de dag in het westen vervliegt

niet heel mijn leven een zinloze strijd was;

dat iets dat ik vond op de lange weg

van ochtend naar de laatste nacht

het vallen van de avond overleeft,

en oplicht in de stille duisternis

voorbij de schemer van het einde.

Intake II

Haar ogen doen me denken aan een ander
die me lang geleden in de ogen keek,
voor ik verdwaalde in mezelf.
Ik hoor dit niet te voelen, denk ik nog,
maar weet dat het te laat is:
ook deze schaamte blijft mij niet bespaard.

Ik sluit de deur, verdwijn weer in
de leegte van mijn leven.
Zoals een ander naar de hoeren gaat
om wat hij in het leven niet kan vinden
bij een vreemde vrouw te kopen,
zo ga ik naar een psychologe.
Dit is de afspraak. Ik betaal;
zij doet of mijn verhaal
de moeite van het horen waard is.

Eve

On days like these I still remember you 
With all the waste of summer in your face, 
Your gestures with a sudden, timeless grace, 
The soft brown of your hair, the winding blue 

Of rivers in your eyes that wander through 
A land of silent fields and drifting ways. 
On days like these I feel there is a place 
Where even faded love is fair and true. 

But is this solace for a soul that burns 
With dreams of would have, could have, should have been? 
And is this comfort for a mind that turns 

Upon a memory that never came 
To be in life, a vision never seen, 
A swiftly learned but long-forgotten name?