TO THE SOUTH Poem by Tonnus Oosterhoff

Near Rostock the quayside was blue. In Fulda the wind was up.
The Neckar swelled to the sandbags.
In Heidelberg, I think, the stationer's was called Pech, I
pilfered a stapler; I paid scrupulously for the road map.
To make a comparison
all through Germany
simply not to


I stand by a cold lake,
green tanks drowned-man's-movements.
The map folded on my back in my smallish, womanish hands.
Village and road on the other side, a jetty there.
A white dinghy in stripy sunlight.
'Who are you? My name is Harp!'
I didn't understand for sure, I
just hoped I think that I was being called.


I want to live! So on to the South.
So my nose grows large, my cheeks shrink.
Rose and hawthorn. Chestnut blossom. I want
to bray like a Calabrian donkey,
convulse with joy fear and desire.