Herman Hendrik ter Balkt Poems

The ants moved into a house
right below ours;
our address did not become theirs:
a sand hill under the floor
...

Time was lacking,
yes, no doubt about it.
A black thrush was singing
shamelessly, poor
...

I saw four hanged people:
lights, spiders on their threads -
mind like autumn, old light
flickering on and off in cold spaces
...

At the time I lived in a country
where the potato-grading machine arrived.

From salted wood made with many rains
it worked as a monotonous brain.
...

For Anouchka and René Notenboom

St. Albans Grand Steeple Chase charged in here
Under trees that are not the living ones
On Singraven's waterside and in the autumnal woods
...

One day all the sties and burrows opened
And out came the cave-bear the mammoth the seafaring
cormorant, that poetic diving bird, the white-headed vulture
the rock-goat from the mountains, the sea unicorn
...