FORGOTTEN FIELD Poem by Remco Campert

If I take good care of myself
that's what she asks me in the café
where I'm sipping my drink

I nod eagerly
that's something you must do
when you're old

and point to the contents of my shopping bag
a takeaway dinner of sausage and kale
the evening papers full of the world's squabbles
a cigarette carton like pistols in wartime
and a bottle of wine from Portugal
‘Forgotten Field' that's its name
never entered in the land register
I'll have to go there some day