JANUARY 1943 Poem by Remco Campert

for Joekie Broedelet
I was walking along the cart track
on a sparkling winter day

my mother came to meet me
a figure in the distance

the night before I'd had a dream
I'd been sailing my little boat

my hand skimmed the duckweed
in the gleaming waterway

the boat sailed to the other side
and stranded in the rushes there

when I looked up I saw my father
thrusting his arm through barbed wire

he gazed at me with pleading eyes
my father asking me for bread.

***

On that country road mother
you held me tight for ages

your eyes were red
your jacket smelled of city

the Germans had posted us a card
informing us that he had died

in Neuengamme bitter word
they'd murdered him.

***

I felt nothing then but knew
there was something I should feel

I looked past my mother's sleeve
towards the deep enticing wood

when I got the chance I told her all
about the things that interested me

the trap I'd set
at the entrance to the rabbit warren

the hut that I was building
in a tree I alone knew

only later did I feel a pain
pain that never went away

that still floods through my body
as I write this

long ago and yet so near
time lasts a lifetime long.