In love Poem by Eddy Van Vliet

That's the way it goes, the way it was and always will be.
Promise to meet in cafés on closing day.
Standing on the wrong side of a bridge.
Between thumb and index finger, like burning ashes,
the wrongly gathered phone number.
Parks too wet, hotels too full, Paris too far.
Love as a multiple of misunderstandings.

Clumsy words like y'know at hand and -
ignoring the laws of good taste
and intellect, wanting so much to write
that of the city in which you first met
there is a map, on which a kiss
was recorded and barely a kiss it was.

Translated by John van Tiel