The Hague — Web Exclusive

By Remco Campert
Translated by Nora Delaney

Roofs coated all in grime,
the green brass of churches,
brackish air, corroded homes,
de-grassed grassland, neglected sea.
Ah, and the sad slow yellow trams,
and the goose flesh of windswept streets.
The whole of the Hague was one Panorama Mesdag,
every day a bedraggled Queen’s Day.

My grandfather, unshaven
wandered like Strindberg through the house,
caught in his own bathrobe.

And as bored as I was
playing the restrained madman
with my small toy dagger,
I assassinated a table lamp
or an old lilac cushion in the attic.

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Remco Campert is one of the Netherlands' best-known poets. Widely published in France, Italy, and Germany, he is a prolific writer and the recipient of many awards.

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Nora Delaney is a writing instructor and Dutch-English translator living in Boston. Her poetry, essays, and translations have been published in Fulcrum, Little Star, Literary Imagination, The Critical Flame, Jacket, Dark Sky Magazine, Absinthe: New European Writing, and other publications.

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Original text: Remco Campert, Dichter. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1995.