FILM Poem by Miriam Van hee

1

there was a film once that I didn't understand
until I saw the end after I'd floated for hours
in a dark, colourless space
and had listened to conversations about emptiness,
truth, the isolation of nations

then the cameraman came to a house
with a garden round it, a swing, a cat
in the grass, oak trees and larches as I recall,
a fine web of light in the forest, and green,
I can still picture it now, green was the end

after all the grey and the black and the white,
green was invented, a miracle
of transience, short-lived and speechless


2

we had missed the boat to the island
the road didn't correspond with the map,
we passed the empty holiday homes
on the wrong side of the brook
there was a chorus of birds high up in the trees
it was a dizzying spring

suddenly before our eyes a steppe
unfolded, a kind of azeri plain
that foreshadowed the sea, a long stretch of land,
something in the distance moved, a horse,
slowly a blanket of clouds approached,
was this the end already or the beginning

our eyes looked for a second horse
and found it, reclining, quite
close to the first, a small, dark
spot in time and we decided to wait
until this second one too moved its tail
in the soft, lingering light of the day


3

slowly the guests move up the slope
we watch them and see with the same eyes
the gorge in which the sun had disappeared
we hear their voices, now they get into their cars,
we hear the car doors, we remain
standing on the edge of the night that
stretches out endlessly like dark blue water

now they switch on lights, they depart and nothing
suggests big changes, the trees are rustling
softly, now and then an owl hoots in the distance

there is no end and no beginning
we don't dissolve, we cannot hide
we hear how somewhere, nearby, a cricket
begins its song, first falteringly, then bravely
and unruffled, we do not find it
but we search, we search