ballad of my aunt calling to wish me
a happy birthday or vice versa
For we were born on the same day a mystery
Yet unsolved for she being so much
Older than me how could we coincide
A mystery already haunting the barns
At the farmhouse the half-light the door
And suddenly the sunlit kitchen and the smell
Of coffee but the grown-ups nattering on about
How big I've grown but the choice array
Of fancy cakes on the table oilcloth but my uncle Henk
The one that scares me a little at times he pours me
A nip of brandy just a standard prank to needle -
"He's just a child!" - my aunts
Oh did he yes he was a prankster
Says auntie oh ah luv'd tha' man ah did
though soiled he was back off the land
My eyes lit up whenever I saw him
What's that, lad, all of twenty years?
She talks way out of step with my own feeling
As from times past such a strong feeling
Of happiness surges and leaves me already
Sucks vacuum my little soul onder the grey lard
Of recollection I'm gasping for breath auntie
Just coughing yes eternal colds for the
remained-togetherness lost unsniffably
Wrapped in time yet at times a scent irrepressibly
Tears the cellophane just now something in your voice
Have I got draughts here auntie you bet an old
Upstairs flat chinks and cracks and bare
Floorboards not because we think it's warm but looking good
The warmth is past you used to like looking good
But not among the cows but in the jeep you did
That you all used to get to Hoorn for theatre
Lord that cold jeep fancy you still recalling
Before we went I scrubbed it clean of dung and dirt
Thear be th' milkman now ah'll call ye back
Don't bother auntie. . . Hung up she has a chat
At the door of her granny house where she
After uncle's death close to the children
They thought in their distant village wouldn't
Mother like that of course saved her from scrabble
With Corrie Kos and chinwag with my mother
After sixty years with all those people
There is a branch of the Women's Institute here
Haven't you mother that by now they've all grown up
And small (and dead) and moved away but that is fun
Here's brother Piet from yet another village followed
The scent of the old nest and but she can't know that yet
Next year her sister Geer (88) from Zeeland will
Join the ranks when her husband
Dies sudden- oh my God there my auntie
Booms out of my answering machine not switched
Off the thing too late so I call her
To finally congratulate her on her eighty-sixth birthday and she me
On my lost years jerk I think regret
Says she why should you for you lose nothing
Recollection takes time out of time
But mother does she never recalls nothing
Oh dear, your mother yes but she keeps up with the times
She keeps track of everything but why should one
It's a rotten world as she always says and how
She called me only yesterday but what I'm saying
There's nowt that she an' ah can do about 't and then
We've done our bit the children are now grown
(And you two so close to death auntie what is it like
With so much dying dumped just outside your door
The torn-up road the waste beyond
But why does more of me die with you auntie
Than when my mother are you perhaps a narrowly
Defined and undiluted feeling in me and does
My mother dwell in all my brain-cells
Today we coincide again auntie don't we
Take me back with you to the hay the heavy smell of cattle
The rattling pail half-light the
Kitchen door coffee) - shit she's hung up on me
Of course because I didn't answer her
The torn-up line the signals down my spine.