24 NOVEMBER 1990, Page 47

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Give me the broad, the languid rivers, the movements you do not see but sense, the drinking willows, the aimless dykes, a dead-still town along the shore.

Give me the winter, the wasted landscape, the field bereft of a sign of life, the resilience of the crackling heather.

Give me the cat as he looks before he leaps, leaps to fight, leaps to flee, to mate or to hunt. As he looks.

Give me a horse in full gallop or on his side in the grass. Give me

Translated from the Dutch by James Brockway