ELEGY Poem by Maurice Gilliams

Sunday in the country.
You smoke, you look out of the window,
linden trees in front of the house
and slow boys sauntering past.

Summer's evening is on the fields
and you can hear the trains far off.
The ditches taste of melancholy,
the landscape is teasing me, bells come
and steal the honey from your heart.

The villages you want to visit
where brides live
and boats sail on the rivers
call you in the falling dark.
In the wheatfields stands a house.

But you wait here by the window
of a farmhouse room
where a single chair draws the silence
and flowers stand withering, brown
in a small glass of green water.