Three Poems

Geese at Vinkeveen

'Do not concern yourself with the form of pain'
                                                       Dante, Purgatorio X

Spring and autumn it's Limbo -
cat civet staining
the spears of the crocuses;
a magpie wiping its beak against the lawn;
switching on and switching off
the hosepipe and the community fountain;
and there are the geese at Vinkeveen.

Their sky has been no civil enclosure.
The clouds wished for by fishermen
are simply the bringers of magnetism.
The magnificent sunset and the appearing moon,
filigree of isobars on the weather-map,
have no point beyond a form of digestion,
...