Painting by Akbar Behkalam, Iran-Germany BEARERS OF SCARS The dead with broken faces rise up The tongue of the humiliated swells The stormy tide of victims rises But

LAIKA * In a metal bullet, The best, we own, Flies day after day a dead dog Around our earth As a warning, That ever so could circle

Searching With the white cane of the blind, I tapped the earth, seeking a human. Sand was always swishing away below. But today, today I struck solid rock,

Picture by Germain Droogenbroodt WAIT FOR ME Wait for me, Time, you’re galloping too fast. Wait for me in the pages of this endless pain of biography, in

Sunrise above the Sea, Altea, picture by Germain Droogenbroodt Don’t follow the stars of the night but upstream the darkness, which is earthly and palpable. Don’t spare the

THE BLACK HERALDS A protest for the killing of George Floyd There are blows in life, so hard . . . I don’t know! Blows like the hate

633 Gedicht van de week Black in the black and in the black, black crossed by lightning. And the sea opens up and skips the whiteness up to

DAYS TO COME At a time when roads are empty and people getting out wear a surgical mask, you may see a heron dipping its feet into the

ETERNAL I dream sometimes of my father in our last call. He said, “I was waiting for you.” And I was delighted for calling in time, though it

GOD Most of the time, man steers his ship by the middle course without much difficulty, as if his experience had put it on automatic pilot of human