Emmanuel Moses
The rampart behind the leprosarium:
That also is Jerusalem.
Blue brooks cross the fields,
Light silver-leafs a stocky tree.
In precious books which slip between our fingers
Each page tells a different story.
I also like to sit with you in that little café
Near the Rohin where the minutes are marked off
By the clanking of the streetcars
In February when the cold bites down
Into the porous flesh of Amsterdam’s bricks
The dead rise up with the provisionally
Living and say each in turn
“How we have escaped.”