Double Edged

Somewhere in Holland in the rainWe had changed into our non-cycling gearAnd were sheltering and chattingOutside the house –The door opened and the two of usStumbled – embarrassed, mutteringAn apology to the unknown man.

‘No, no, come in please. I heard youTalking and had to wait until I wasSure that you were not Germans.’A double-edged sword you might say,And difficult to dodge –So we followed him into his house,A terraced affair, but deceptive:

Long and narrow the room telescopedInto a fancy kind of conservatoryFestooned with plants and flowers.And his talk was thick with storiesOf life on a whaling ship with hardSeasoned men and ports full of womenWith a double-edged lure.

Coffee and cakes and even beerGreased my tongue and so I asked:‘Why not the Germans sir?’He smiled at my question just likeMy old English teacher used to smileAt me when I told him it was pointlessTo read Chaucer in language no one spoke.

‘You English have been lucky young man.You do not have to live with the bloodOf humiliation running through your veins.You do not live with the memory of havingWatched a family of Jews being draggedFrom their house and being carted offTo God knows where . . . and . . . and . . .’

He ground to a halt and turned away from usStaring, seemingly, at his plants –And suddenly, that part of the roomSeemed to me to be a cave,And his voice, when he spoke again,Seemed to come from the depths of a cave.‘I was young then, but I said and did nothing . . .’

And then, in a whisper, ‘nothing’.It was as though the sound had beenSucked out of the room and we had no words,No Dutch words anyway, to fill a kind of vacuum.My cycling buddy, a common sense kind of bloke,Mouthed to me: ‘Say something, anything.’But I was puzzled by what seemed to be

A confession – but why confess to two lads?Two strangers? And after so many years.He turned to face us with a few words of DutchThen wind-swept tales in English of life at sea.‘You’ve to learn English if you er, comb the world,’The first word which went with his accent,‘And I had more words to curse the Germans.’

A bit of fool’s gold in Fort Knox perhapsOr a dead end for an exhausted truth?For how to judge such a cruel-sad remarkWhen a little life, lived in a lukewarmWorld of petty quarrels and flesh woundsDemanded a liberal, light response?We left and thanked a dark-attractive stranger.