In the garden by Jan Eijkelboom

In the garden 1 In the garden I look up from my book and see the confidence of bees entering the flower of a Himalayan balsam, now and then bumping into seed-cases that, silently exploding, spread their well-aimed black seed. Insecure I start reading again. 2 I did plant a little tree when I turned sixty, hoping that it would get enough light and some air between the trees that were already there in a time before I existed. In its shadow children will not know who, with spade, manure and water briefly worked here with the soil.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008 [photographer unknown]

Original title: In de tuin From: 'De wimpers van de dageraad' - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam - 1987

Allotments along the railroad by Jan Eijkelboom

Allotments along the railroad Everywhere along the track little gardens like playing cards. Strange, that I in spring when they are turned over and raked while the beanpoles are waiting against the privy-sized shed constructed from four old doors of which one opens- should think of the dying chrysanthemums, the withered leaves, the poles piled up along the edge, when in the area far and wide, beyond the narrow ditch, big bonfires of leaves and stumps burn and smoke remains itself in a mist which yet does not prevent the sun from plating a far-off greenhouse with silver and closer by staining the reed- strange, that I then did not think of how loose and raked this repeating private domain would be again soon.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008 [photographer unknown]

Original title: Volkstuintjes langs de spoorbaan From: 'De wimpers van de dageraad' - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam - 1987

Helena of Heerlen by Manuel Kneepkens

Helena of Heerlen Last night I found myself on the patio of the Heesberg Tennis Club And also she was there, the gold-blond long-legged who we, grammar-school students full of craving, called Helena.... Friendship, Love were as a dream ought to be.... Only.. now we drank Champagne no longer orange squash or grenadine Pupils from the Fifties turned out to be Gods.... Athanatoi with tennis rackets And, look, the blond hair of the First Lady of Troj was still as lustrous long as it used to be and also the same smile coloured her cheeks In between our Homer books, red-brown jacketed the hills of the Chalk country looked like our future, endless jade How was it possible.... after so many years of the Carboniferous period united in the dream on the Olympus of Heesberg's Tennis Court with Menelaus' wife, Paris' concubine and soot-fingering Heerlen left for so long...! Oh, Mining town of my memory black Hellas by a marlstone-yellowy sea!

Manuel Kneepkens [1942] (photo Internet)

Original title: Helena van Heerlen

Chili by Hans Tentije

Chili I watched Pablo Neruda's funeral on television, yesterday evening, kitsch-flowers were showered straight from Macchu Picchu with overwhelming splendour upon his coffin, like orange blossoms and hundreds of people sang, in Spanish, the International it was as if he wrote it himself somewhere in Santiago a man lay on the street shot to bits under some newspapers where maybe the false news about Allende's dead was still rustling a bit later an admiral of the military junta appeared on the screen to announce that the left-wing terror was over that the poor would at last be better off what else could I do, goddamnit than to wish a slow, wasting copper poisoning upon him just that and nothing else but at the same moment, your lines, Neruda, came to my mind, slovenly, yet still poignant enough: 'I want to meet death together with the poor who lacked the time to look at him closer beaten up as they are those who splendidly divided and allotted the heavens'

Hans Tentije - 1943 [photographer unknown]

Original title: Chili. From: Is dit genoeg een stuk of wat gedichten, deel 1 - Elsevier Manteau, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, 1982.

Dordrecht's museum garden by Jan Eijkelboom

Dordrecht's museum garden When I am dead in the garden of this museum above the tangled noise of the leaves a blackbird will sing just as clearly on just such a late spring day. And I, I shall be there no more to forget with this singing that I have to die in due course. But on the other hand I shall -you never know- live much longer than that bird. And anyhow when I lie six foot under then my son shall once again hear a blackbird sound just so on just such a late spring day. And he will know who I was and oh, a bird knows nothing. But on the other hand again: if blackbirds could think about their fathers, then they might croak like a raven.

Jan Eijkelboom 1926 - 2008 [photographer unknown]

Original title: Tuin Dordrechts museum - From: Wat blijft komt nooit terug - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam, 1979.

Land of hills and horseshoes by H.J. Mesterom

Land of hills and horseshoes  Land of hills and horseshoes. Superstition on the farms and in the trees, rustling like rain or an endlessly played gramophone record. Once one afternoon a scarecrow snared me when I stole apples in the strongly stirring orchard that made me breathless. Or I spied in the middle of a warm field upon the golden bed in which the wind had slept like a giantess and thought that the sun had set for punishment.

Wind Droom van een bewogen foto nagestaard door pauwenogen* Text by H.J. (Harry) Mesterom   on the wall of a private house, Volderstraatje-Verwersstraat, 's Hertogenbosch

Original title: 'Land van heuvels en hoefijzers' - From: Maatstaf 4, julinummer 1966 - Uitgeverij Daamen NV, Den Haag