Of course it was flat. It was land claimed from the sea; it was the ocean floor without the ocean. In the summer, when it got hot, it was furthermore a rather dry affair; ocher canals soaked up the last bit of moisture from the ground, emptied it behind the dike into the real ocean. The ground would crack, become scaled like the skin of an elephant. It probably wasn't the intention, but that's the way it was because the engineers knew better. Livestock thirsted and sought shade below each other's bodies, panting, thirsting; the grass yellowed and withered - but that was according to plan. And trees could not grow, of course, but the cement pipes triumphed, the kind one makes wells out of - without water, and the cattle stared in apathy in cylinders of dryness, and that was how it was meant to be. Meat as juicy as this, one gets only from the flatlands, like pulque from the agave. In the middle of the day the temperature rose, in the afternoon the ground contracted and became crusty, the cattle would cluster, the horizon began to curve and mirages beckon. Out there the ocean, the lukewarm tidal sea. By God if holes didn't begin to burn into one's brain; near became far, far became quite near. A geometric land, made by engineers, populated by animals. No it wasn't the lush Holland, but it looked a lot like it, just dryer, better drained, a Castile not so far from here. Rose right up into one's face. A vertical surface toward eternity.
"in the closet" 1980 pencil
It was those years, when the imperial era was still more than a recollection. Before the engineers got involved and began to experiment with the submerged areas. But the church bells reclaimed most of it; two o'clock every day yet another schnurrbarter had his body in a coffin. It all took place in proper fashion, a hearse with richly dressed horses in front, riffle corps music with chamois feathers in the hat - trauright zum Todesacker, berlinerluftig return march, up and down streets with tripartite bay windows on gabled houses, wheezing, over bumpy cobblestones, resulting in knackenbeinere outside as well as in. Gone all of a sudden, gone, and inward with even greater wondering for the survivors. Now there is barely a decent beard left - but the cattle cough at noon. The riches make themselves heard, the ground sheds its scales, the meat becomes juicy.
Text by Jørgen Rømer June 1961
(Images Clausen's Art Gallery)