It’s oh so quiet, in Amsterdam
door Bien Schols
A New Year by Barbara Stewart I wake From disturbing dreams Draw the curtains To the long blank white page of day Hoping for a better way I sit In my favourite armchair Facing the window I stare Into the pale grey skies The trees are still and bare The only movement is of birds Swooping sea-gulls The chatter and flutter of a magpie pair This---a New Year While twenty-twenty is in ashes Corona survives Thrives on our despair and fear Always near The damage done I, for one Wait in hope To recover some inner peace and calm In the days to come In twenty-twenty-one Still In lockdown
A New Year. Finally, the calamitous pandemic year of 2020 is over. But the suffering isn’t. The virus, the despair, the fear, the instability are still here. We are in partial lockdown. The curfew has arrived.
I wrote this English poem on 4 January to get my depressed feelings on paper. The streets were empty. My days feel empty. But I also felt a kind of hope for a new start. Time to recover. Time to regain inner peace and face the future optimistically.
by Barbara Stewart