Blauw dreef de zee . . .
—Herman Gorter, ‘Mei’

we were falling into blue while the sunshine made water
we were floating like hairdressers with our golden combs
through cotton-wool waves whose old sound washed us
soothing us with vaseline and a smell like heavy nappies
but it was too cold to swim in Ameland’s browning surf
so we walked among the dunes listening to their whines

Note: This is the third stanza of my reimagining of Herman Gorter’s poem, ‘Mei’ [May], which was first published in Dutch in 1889.