Uncultured atavistic reprobate
alone at night in deepest Amsterdam,
I scribble lines the moon helps punctuate.
Spinoza ground his lens here on the lam;
and there, three dark blocks eastwards, lived Descartes;
and here Anne Frank. There's history everywhere.
We added more tonight: that ancient bar
has seen four centuries' stories blue the air.
Here solitaire is sometimes. This canal
holds secrets, moonlight, still-new rusting bikes.
If I go home alone it's good; or shall
I chance a quick mortality, cruise dikes
and bridges joining in the human flow
that climbs one level to the sea? I go.
Afoot On Land Below The Sea appeared in The Armchair Aesthete.