The well-fed Aryan babies squat and squeal
above the fifteen plastic inches of Madurodam’s
toytown spire, while dark girls shiver
behind their palisades of toothpicks.
Cold beer, fried potatoes with sour cream or lime,
the sweet strong afterscent of hashish ghosting
off the policewoman’s short blond hair.
A train brakes and hits a solid rising octave,
the drawn-out metal shriek damped dull
as someone slides the door shut.
An oaf-eyed boy deposits a pink scoop
of ice cream down the inside
of his little sister’s tee-shirt.
She wails, red-faced, holding the cloth
with its image of a tutu-wearing mouse
away from her skin, mouse and child
wrinkling with hop and seizure.
Her brother’s loud delight
undergoes a lugubrious change,
pawing the spastic air above her head
in ineffectual remorse,
as the wailing circles him in hornet’s mist.