Prose and poetry by Leen Raats
The universe wanted it that way
he claims, and everything happens for a reason
as we’re all made up of pieces of a primordial planet
overwhelmed with nostalgia for the cosmos.
He talks about black holes, the Big Bang
and the evolution from single-celled creature
to fish to mammal to man.
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Cab drivers who know about five English words
but refuse to use them, are speeding in dilapidated Volvos
through a city where amongst thousand-year-old buildings
tourists take pictures of themselves.
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This morning I woke up in the dark.
With pain in my stomach and the voice of the radio newsreader.
Yet the day felt clean. Birds sang along the railway track.
At Brussels Central Station I saw a beggar with a bloodstained face
who no one seemed to see. I asked if I could help. I couldn’t.
Even though I know all about being invisible.
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Deep inland we soon
forget the infinity of the sea.
Today I follow rivers
ruthlessly heading for their end
as I carry sorrow like an old backpack
that shaped itself to the curve of my back
and a smile that is not mine.
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You are safe now I’m here.
Muscles grown, back straight, fists ready.
No one will harm you.
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After all these years you still don't know
how to live, just like every night you
seem to have forgotten how to fall asleep.
It feels indeed like falling
into the arms of the unknown
that you should have been
familiar with by now.
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I'll just have to learn to live with it
said the specialist who casually diagnosed an illness
which he didn't explain, which I had never heard of
but from which I had been suffering for years
and that maybe it was partly my own fault.
I shouldn’t have been so eager to live.
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Good news: an American website just published three of my poems. And not just any site, but ONE ART.
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We are made up of layers.
Like this landscape that
reads like an old book.
Crooked apple trees with names
reminding me of a song
that hasn’t echoed
over these hills for a long time.
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The Greyhound Journal is an online and print magazine based in Hong Kong. They publish work with a historical angle. Their periodic publications contain stories and poems in both Mandarin and English. When I came across their website some time ago, I immediately realized two things: 1. I want to be part of this and 2. I want to send in my poem Loam.
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Leen writes 