Monday 20 September 2010

Poem by the Dutch poet Erik Menkveld



KEEP GROWING

Don’t bloody care, keep growing
up everywhere, filmy or knotted,
upright or skewed, to laws no
human can fathom. And the reasons?

To make lanes out of streets, villages
pricy and posh? To block the light or
view of the prettiest places?

OK, you can find one so splendid
on some winter’s day, hours later it still
stands out in the cyclist who saw it.

But close together they have
hardly a chance to command any attention.
Too old hat moreover
for stove or shipyard, they increasingly
get in the way. And that smidgen
of oxygen they are producing!

Yet never is the usefulness of
trees something you hear questioned.
They’re even grown to serve
as trays on people’s bureaus.

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