Never
so swept with wind,
never
so wet.
Our
bones rattling in its carriages,
the
train, blown across the fields,
tears
into the heart of Leeuwarden,
a
town freezing
with
Frisian breath.
I
came to sing
but
my song was soaked
by
the sobbing sky.
The
whole country opened up
and
drenched us
in
a bitter history.
I
had left my umbrella at home
to
protect my friends
from
the patter of Councillors.
Now
I needed to shelter in a woman’s warmth,
read
her my poems,
to
make all her limbs
melt
round me,
kiss
me hard
in
downtown Leeuwarden;
in
all its wetness,
throw
me roughly
to
the wild land.
Keith
Armstrong
