Zóó . . .
–Herman Gorter, ‘Mei’

so, it sounds just like the song we used to sing together
I will play it for you when we get back from forever—
if you polished my language or buttered up my accent
I would teach your left eye to wink when you laugh . . .
(hihi lol but whose hand was that in the shallow duvet?
whose sunburnt driver’s arm here on the opposite side
of the mist (the heartbreaking cries of calves in polders
sprayed with stikstof that burns deep down the throat
the domes of the biogas plant trucked in behind oaks
sprouting new stems, a twinkling tray of jonge jenevers
on a terrace: spring’s clinking sounds cop a mouthfeel
while generals talk (and the buses turn blue and gold
we reverse our age-old plans (dream a new front gate—

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