The Rembrandt Fanatic

Ten o’ clock in the morning,

Freezing cold under the Oude Kerk,

The bells pealing every half hour

Over the sex shops and tattoo parlours...

(Inside, among the grim grey stone,

Devoid of Catholic flimflam,

No chalice to call a grail,

No candles to light for the dead,

Cold echoes roll over me,

And the ghost of Rembrandt’s wife

Bares her nipple for my mouth...)

I walk up the street, past West Indian whores

Sitting in the red light windows,

Their eyes tired and dead.

In the Rijksmuseum, I stand with a swarm

Of pilgrims before the “Night Watch”,

Reverently pointing out details,

Verifying this reproduction

Of the original in their minds;

Precarious as the fortune

Made and lost on the price of a tulip.


In Rembrandt's house on Jodenbreestraat ,

On black and white marble floors,

Up the steep twisting stairs,

I track the man of shipwrecks

To his drowned treasure.

Here he lived and died more than once,

Worked and raised a family,

Held wife and children dying in his arms,

And bankrupted himself

Till the furious creditors came

To empty the rooms of everything,

Paintings, furnishings, and books,

The collections of seashells and coral,

The Javanese shadow puppets.