WEST FLANDERS Poem by Hugo Maurice Julien Claus

Sparse song dark thread
Land like a sheet
That sinks

Springland of hooves and milk
And children of willow

Fever and summerland when the sun
Makes its young in the corn

Blond fencing
With the deaf-mute farmers by the dead firesides
That pray ‘May God forgive us for
What he has done to us.'

With the fishermen who burn on their boats
With the spotted animals the foaming women
That sink

Land you break into me. My eyes are shards
I in Ithaca with holes in my skin
I borrow your air in my words
Your bushes your lime trees hide in my language

My letters are: West Flanders dune and polder

I drown in you
Land you become a gong in my skull and sometimes
Later in the harbours
A conch: May and beetle Dim light
Earth.

Translation John Irons