HOLLANDS DIEP Poem by Astrid Lampe

my translation professor thinks my sentences are small taps
I am deliberately silent in all languages
naked as truth he says
poetry flows

he hurls above it a Dutch sky
and the skirts of my mother tongue
billow up sprawl out
mix warm and cold
catch the air current

a kind of land of plenty of Brussels lace
to flog illegally

force forces the seam out of my blouse

now in a daze my prof
chases a lure thread through the suds
leads the cow to the open field
where all my little animals pass water

we flow over

thus two drops of water my big love
snatched from the huge river arm -
secretly, in the rigid jet of manly language
hung up on my drunken heaven
climbs the sun