YOU REQUESTED LOVE POEM
for V
Look
my love, what you gave me
was the lust for life
in me Novgorod's
bells resounded
even if that to you
means nothing, listen
to those bronze voices
close to lake Ilmen
where Nevsky fought
and we parked the car
by concrete hotel
in that old-'n'-new town
where cries from past
had worn into walls
Murmansk was still
twelve hundred kilometres
ever onwards, but then
that's where
the sun never set.
© Bart
FM Droog, 2000
© translation
Willem Groenewegen, 2001
original title: Je vroeg me om liefdesgedicht, from Benzine,
Passage
Publishing Company, Groningen, 2000