Het Dorp [English translation]

I still have a picture postcard

Depicting a church, a cart with a horse

J. van der Ven's butcher's shop

A pub, a lady riding a bike

It very probably doesn't tell you anything

But it's where I was born

This village, I still remember how it was

The farmer's children in the classroom

A cart rattling on the cobblestones

The town hall with a pump in front

A dirt road through the cornfields

The cattle, the farmsteads

Refrain:

And bordering my father's garden path

I saw the tall trees standing

I was a child not knowing any better

Than that it would never go by

How simple life was then

In simple houses wedged in green

With country flowers and a hedge

But they apparently lived wrongly

For the village has been modernized

And now they're on the right way

For just watch how rich life is

They watch quizzes on the telly

Living in concrete boxes

With a lot of glass enabling one to see

how the couch is positioned at the neighbour's

and her sideboard with plastic roses

Refrain

And bordering my father's garden path

I saw the tall trees standing

I was a child not knowing any better

Than that it would never go by

The village youths clump together

Girls clad in miniskirts, boys sporting a Beatles haircut

blaring along with the beat music

I know, it's their right to do so,

it's the latest sign of the time (as you put it)

but it makes me rather despondent

I've known their fathers

how they bought liquorice for 1 cent

I've watched their mothers skipping

That village of yore, it's gone

All that's left to me is this:

a picture postcard and memories

How was I to know - when a child

still watching the high trees

bordering my father's garden path -

that it was to disappear forever.

• Artist:Wim Sonneveld