Herman Van Veen
Miscellaneous
Singing Dead
One evening at about half past ten, I was taking a walk with myself
and the people of a neat new neighborhood
I saw myself sitting there looking house and house after house after house. Counted out and sagging and talking out and I thought: if the world were to end, there would be no one who would stop it. has the holes because they are stuck to the picture tube.
The television is still on
but the world has ended.
Now it is a puppet stall here
with dead people behind the window.
One evening our entire nation dies
not by mercury or by poison or by the bomb,
but by a sleeping drug that a foreign power
over the television. and distributes the evening newspaper.
There is a drink full of pessimism in the making
opportunism added to taste
and some cynicism, yes, a grain or three
and some racism after a a drink or three.
And when the world has ended
then the television stays on
and here it is a doll stand
with thaws behind the window.
Every home is suddenly a glass coffin
where one no longer misses life and love
where one no longer listens to a record and no longer reads a book
where one only mumbles: I have already been there.
There is no longer a person who has ever taken to the streets again, there is no more joy and no more admiration, there is no more passion and not even fear, there hangs the proverb: death lasts the longest.
And when the world has ended
then the television stays on
then it is a puppet stall here
with dead people behind the window