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