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1. Amsterdam
There is a city on the sea whose black
Waves water the tulips of liberty
I can hardly believe such a place
As she exists in these dark days
Her barques moored in peaceful rows follow
The roots carrying water to the town
I once stepped from one of these to find
Freedom rippling in the Nordic breeze
To breathe freely after long-accepted
Tyranny had settled on the lungs
Is like to hear that there is a Heaven
And believe, though Earth is Hell sometimes
That it is our true inheritance
That beauty is our natural condition
2. Prisoners
We are prisoners, let us not be unclear
Our bodies and our thoughts imprison us
Our institutions, governments and states
Reach around us like walls to enclose us
Insanity and paranoia ensue
How could they not? This is unnatural
We are gods trapped in hourglasses
Genies incarcerated in time
I want to reach out to you, but pain
Like a shackle weighs down my arms
I want to talk to you, but life
Has choked up my throat and I dare not speak
The prison guards wander in our mirrors
Twirling their truncheons and rattling their keys
3. Birds
A chink of light falls across the cell
No-one can stop the eye from taking it in
We play with light, twisting it in our fingers
We bathe our eyes in it, and our gaunt faces
We are like birds hopping around a bath
Quiet, gentle things with no malice
We might fly away as soon as stay
Hold perfectly still and we might perch on your palm
The prison court is a winter garden
And we can leave for the open sky
This alone encourages us to stay
And if you feed us seeds we might return
With the spring, bearing increase of sunlight
On our wings, as though this is what lifts them
4. Autumn
I watch autumn spreading over the town
The trees are paintbrushes with golden tips
Death rains down gently like seeds
Cold strikes the heart with a hammer
We are grown like trees to wither with the wind
Half-mature, we hang awkwardly in our bodies
With this instrument we will measure love
And catch it like a fish from cold streams
We will build it like a city to last the winter
And, shut up in our warmth, light candles
To melt the frost from our windows that some
Might see that human life is still alive
Glorious, hopelessly dancing
Like lamplight on the face of the canal
5. Jerusalem
In the rafters of the Old Church
We watched the mechanism of the clock
Ticking endlessly through history
Human hands having measured the span of God
We looked forward through a spyglass
Leaping like sparrows out into the future
Moving so fast, like clockwork birds
You thought we could live a lifetime in a year
Slow down, that we might beat the ages
And watch the fleets put forth into the dusk
They will cross unheard-of horizons
In search of golden Jerusalem
And all the while, you and I held here
In our hands the philosopher’s stone
6. New Amsterdam
They will put into harbour, columbine
Conquistadors to wreck and work anew
And we, at the foundation of Amsterdam
Will sling our boats together for the while
White flowers will honeysuckle up
The walls and roots will tear us apart
What good is it to love except that we
Keep asking for more and more eternally
We could go back into the dark that made us
But there find oily spectra yet unknown
And a voice that mocks us comforts us and says
Here is the song unsung, prepared for you
We would be churlish not to take it up
Like a sun into our sky and try again