Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, Number 2. November 2018. ISSN: 2581-7094
Shadows of Amsterdam
--- Amelia Walker
What—you once asked me—is the weight of a shadow?
—your voice liquid like glass as we traipsed dusk streets
of Amsterdam, where, having taken some wrong turn,
we’d stumbled upon sights we would happily have skirted:
those windows
those women
those women inside windows
lit up, reflective
women with windows inside them, so open
and so sealed up, so visible
—visibly
obscure.
I thought your question dwaas1 until I realised
I had no answer. So I asked you
—What kind of shadow?—which pushed us to wonder
about the many kinds of shadows we might say exist
and bear no existence, the many more
we are maybe unable to speak, to think: shadows
themselves shadowed, shadows we don’t see
or won’t.
Do they exist?
Can they—?
If they did, how
would we weigh them?
Would they be heavier
or lighter
than shadows we see,
shadows of which we speak?
All this depends, we realised, on what makes a shadow
exist or not exist—if shadows can be said to exist at all.
What is a shadow? Merely absence
of light? Or is light itself a tear
in the presence shadow signals?
Both these are foolish suggestions, we soon realised,
for shadows cannot be torn from light, nor vice
versa. Shadows, like lights, bear shades and gradients—
colours, even. Then there are senses of heat and cool, smooth
hard soft rippling textures and scents, like smoke
and burning, the tastes of shadows, the sounds
they do not make as they shrink and grow, become
ever new, though so ancient.
Of all these things and more, we spoke and spoke—saying nothing
of the windows, the women, the ways the district changes
as one wanders from the lit tourist strips where rents are high
and flesh tight on young bodies, white bodies that smile
and dance like everybody’s watching (which everybody is
and there’s no shame if they love it, as many do).
Further out, we saw—and did not see—bodies
clearly tired of dancing, slumped bodies of women whose soft,
streaked bellies remembered—still remember—children borne
and perhaps somewhere waiting to be fed, or for help
with homework.
Not many of these bodies were white.
Nor were they young.
Nor without the scars and plough-lines life brings when it is hard
and mean
as life too often is.
Those dwaalicht2 streets mapped for us a tale of privilege
and its problems, clearer than any sociologist’s statistics
or peer-reviewed report. Yet of this map—its implications—we
in our lost states said nothing, speaking only of shadows
and their existence—existences—or lack thereof—the weights
they bear and cannot bear. And all
the while as we wandered, we tended like flies
towards the light, searching for home,
for warmth, oblivious
to the shade
—the fading
stretching shade—
we cast.
—your voice liquid like glass as we traipsed dusk streets
of Amsterdam, where, having taken some wrong turn,
we’d stumbled upon sights we would happily have skirted:
those windows
those women
those women inside windows
lit up, reflective
women with windows inside them, so open
and so sealed up, so visible
—visibly
obscure.
I thought your question dwaas1 until I realised
I had no answer. So I asked you
—What kind of shadow?—which pushed us to wonder
about the many kinds of shadows we might say exist
and bear no existence, the many more
we are maybe unable to speak, to think: shadows
themselves shadowed, shadows we don’t see
or won’t.
Do they exist?
Can they—?
If they did, how
would we weigh them?
Would they be heavier
or lighter
than shadows we see,
shadows of which we speak?
All this depends, we realised, on what makes a shadow
exist or not exist—if shadows can be said to exist at all.
What is a shadow? Merely absence
of light? Or is light itself a tear
in the presence shadow signals?
Both these are foolish suggestions, we soon realised,
for shadows cannot be torn from light, nor vice
versa. Shadows, like lights, bear shades and gradients—
colours, even. Then there are senses of heat and cool, smooth
hard soft rippling textures and scents, like smoke
and burning, the tastes of shadows, the sounds
they do not make as they shrink and grow, become
ever new, though so ancient.
Of all these things and more, we spoke and spoke—saying nothing
of the windows, the women, the ways the district changes
as one wanders from the lit tourist strips where rents are high
and flesh tight on young bodies, white bodies that smile
and dance like everybody’s watching (which everybody is
and there’s no shame if they love it, as many do).
Further out, we saw—and did not see—bodies
clearly tired of dancing, slumped bodies of women whose soft,
streaked bellies remembered—still remember—children borne
and perhaps somewhere waiting to be fed, or for help
with homework.
Not many of these bodies were white.
Nor were they young.
Nor without the scars and plough-lines life brings when it is hard
and mean
as life too often is.
Those dwaalicht2 streets mapped for us a tale of privilege
and its problems, clearer than any sociologist’s statistics
or peer-reviewed report. Yet of this map—its implications—we
in our lost states said nothing, speaking only of shadows
and their existence—existences—or lack thereof—the weights
they bear and cannot bear. And all
the while as we wandered, we tended like flies
towards the light, searching for home,
for warmth, oblivious
to the shade
—the fading
stretching shade—
we cast.
Notes on ‘Shadows of
Amsterdam’
1. Dwaas is a Dutch word, which has no exact English
equivalent, although it essentially implies foolishness. I have used it here because
it feels a better fit for the poem’s setting, tone and lyric rhythm.
2. Dwaalicht is a complex Dutch word that can mean a strange
light, including dusk light. It can also refer to a will-o-the-wisp, or may
suggest something dwindling or uncertain. In this case it implies all these
things and is additionally a reference to Willem Elsschot’s novel Het Dwaalicht, in which three men search
the dark streets of Amsterdam for a woman who may or may not exist.