Recently at the market I ran into someone
who looked at me in surprise.
‘Do you still exist?’
I felt the urge to turn around.
We got talking.
The man had seen me in the theatre
in the nineteen-sixties.
He had once emigrated
but had returned to the Netherlands
to be buried in Utrecht in due course.

Told him
that besides the genetic luck,
the singing
has probably ensured
that I can still perform
around one hundred and forty performances a year
with heart and soul.
Of course it creaks here and there
and I do not jump as high
as at seventy-eight years old.

So yes sir
I am still here.
And if it is up to me
still
longer still.

Herman van Veen