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.