Memories of Holland

Thinking of Holland
I see broad rivers
slowly chuntering
through endless lowlands,
rows of implausibly
airy poplars
standing like tall plumes
against the horizon;
and sunk in the unbounded
vastness of space
homesteads and boweries
dotted across the land,
copses, villages,
couchant towers,
churches and elm-trees,
bound in one great unity.
There the sky hangs low,
and steadily the sun
is smothered in a greyly
iridescent smirr,
and in every province
the voice of water
with its lapping disasters
is feared and hearkened.

Hendrik Marsman