Monday 1 February 2021

To a Chinese from Dordrecht by Jan Eijkelboom

Jan Eijkelboom 1926-2008
photo Internet


To a Chinese from Dordrecht

I had your poster with a poem
- just listen carefully -
attached to the window
with tape that when it got warmer
did not stick on one side
so that you hung lopsided
and look, your so crooked cigar
now pointed straight down
while your slightly crooked mouth
thus became straight, or straightened up
(only the poster was hanging).
Diagonal was, on the other hand
your broadly-striped shirt
in which the death-doomed body
could crackle like gravel.
Suddenly I didn't see you at home
but in a pressure suit on the moon,
still alive enough, but with a grin
no longer. You saw too much
of what on this earth, even
on this island, on the Bankastraat,
would never again be what it was.

I cut two new pieces of tape
and hang you pure spirit level.


Original title: Op een Dordtse chinees From: De gouden man - Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers - Amsterdam - 1982.

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