IN HOLLAND. . .
Holland’s no place for me to live,
Raw passion there they can’t forgive.
Whatever would the neighbours think
Who peer and pant through every chink?
Give me the steppes, the open skies,
Where fellow-men don’t spoil one’s day:
No heron will flee my lusty cries,
No vixen start and scoot away.
Holland’s no place for me to die,
Rotting in soggy ground to lie
Where one has never really lived.
Rather roam, longing, low and high,
The company of nomads keep.
‘He’s failed,’ my smug compatriots sneer.
It’s true, I wish I’d cut more deep;
That’s cost this free man very dear.
Holland’s no place for me to live,
Your life to chasing goals you give,
Thinking of others constantly.
I must hurt only furtively,
Never thump someone’s ugly face
When I can’t stand their damned grimace.
Attacking people without a cause
Shows disrespect for moral laws.
In poky houses I’ll not live
Which Ugliness spawned on this shore
In towns and villages galore.
All walk stiff-collared, in black droves
– Not stylishly, but just to give
The feeling they know what behoves.
Each citizen the other greets,
Parading through the Sunday streets.
Holland’s no place for me to bide,
I’d ossify, seize up inside.
There life’s too stolid, too sedate,
Men weigh their words, dispassionate.
They’d never stick their own necks out,
The helpless, though, they single out.
No shrunken yokel’s head’s found this far north,
No glorious crime of passion ever blazes forth.
