LAMENTO 3. Poem by Peter Verhelst

3.
Man on a mountain, his eyes closed, the man sits smiling
on the edge of the mountain pointing at the landscape, without
looking at us over his shoulder he points over the edge,
he speaks without moving his lips, his hair white,
his forehead white, he says: ‘Do you see the lake?'

How is it possible that between the root hairs and grasses
we didn't see it surge, how the small animals already fled up the mountain,
how the first tree crowns melted like glasses in the molten glass
of the evening sky, how birds first formed a cloud
above the blue shadows of the trees and then one by one
fell into the water - as if the lake had been made for that.

We sit on the edge of the mountain, eyes closed
we sit with rolled-up trouser legs, yet without the man
we see, lifting our feet from the water, raindrops
fall up from the water, as if flapping their wings all those birds
are pecking at the underside of the water, we see, even though
our eyes are popping out of our heads, we see dozens, hundreds of fingertips
of the man write something on the paper-thin, silver underside of the water,
something that for a lifetime now we hadn't remembered.