Everything
was straight in your face
on Rozen Dwars Straat.
Proud
to be Jordaanese,
you wore a flower
in your hair,
on a road full
of colour
and perfume.
On St. Nicholas’ Day,
they gave you a present
of football,
all the way
from the Sonny Boys
of Surinam
to the Meerboys
of Amsterdam.
‘Devil’s calves’,
your father had,
a shot
like thunder over the Rijkesmuseum
where your mother,
Ria Dil,
cleaned,
working the ‘Night Watch’
through the underground tunnels
of a World of Art,
with Rembrandt, Rubens and M.C. Escher
your Stars.
The colour of those galleries
lit your mind,
took you
to the Mayans of Peru,
the Ancient Egyptians,
and the Crazy Cosmonauts
of your bright imaginings
in Bilbao Square,
Amsterdam Old West.
At the J.J. van Noord School,
in the regimented drizzle,
you practiced
knocking down bricks
and teachers
with the ball:
it was Football,
just Football,
only Football for you,
dancing inside your head’s canals,
all the seconds
of each teeming day
on the Amstel trams.
Ruud,
I am ferrying
these lines for you
across the Seas my father sailed;
words from a Geordie Boy,
dug from black-and-white chares,
simply
to let you know
that I saw the child
in you,
the Wonder shine in you,
in the sultry dreadlocked darkness of your face.
And I saw you cry out
by the Tyne
for your roots:
for Jerry Haatrecht your best friend
and all the black players of ‘89
who died
on a DC-8
in Suriname
and still burn on
in you.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
