***
Your gloved hands
Over the pages of a rare book –
SintBaldus Beach.
December by the sea
Is when I never see your wrists,
Is when I think: “When to unglove you?”
The traces of the past, the fingerprints of Proust
is what I spot:
A wrist-length pair he is wearing
to head to 4 o’clock tea.
Two gentlemen
Are throwing down their gauntlets
For a duel.
A librarian
Is handling a rare photograph of someone
He once has loved,
And probably still does.
Young ladies buttoned
Into above-the-elbow
Opera garments
Are Flirting on the porch
With Titian –
A portrait ‘Man with a glove’.
I lose my prudence
When I cannot read your palms,
I burn with the desire
To glide into your handschoenen.
A sudden whisper
falls down from the sky:
“Do wear gloves
when in the church…”.
