A FOGGY DAY IN ROTTERDAM Poem by Cornelis Bastiaan Vaandrager

You know the feeling: waiting some afternoon
for the fog to come down. Waiting
for the dusk to fall. Or becoming evening. He
(I'm talking about him) looks,
sees empty buses
starting doggedly, going to the city - in search of more fog?


Peoples voices. Rioting? Rooting?
He recognizes them, the voices. The people
He doesn't know - never has.


You know the feeling: embarrassingly precise
he can tell you (but he doesn't):
‘Now the telephone rings.'
And then the telephone does ring. The fear
of sensing this. And the fear (even worse)
of being mistaken after ten, eleven correct forecasts.


The fog's inside.
Already the radiators have chilled.
He pulls his legs up. Waits.
It's getting dark. Evening.
Shivering, he pulls a hair out of his wrist.