New Year's Greetings Poem by Hendrik Jan Marsman

Having no faith in big words
in small words, conjunctions
interjections, in the last word
everybody wants and nobody gets

A total end to conversation
with harsh punishments
ripping the tongue out the most lenient

The horse along the railway
staring at passing express trains
the grass waiting for night to fall
a stone warms itself in the last light.

Why did you desert me?
What a laughable complaint.

Translation: Scott Rollins