Het Dorp [English translation]

At home I still have a postcard

Upon which a church, a horse cart

and butcher's shop J. van der Ven stands.

A pub, a lady on the bycicle

It tells you probably nothing

But it is where I was born.

This village, I still know how it was.

The peasant childeren in the class,

A cart rattling on the cobblestones,

The town house with a pump in front of it,

A sand road in between grain,

The livestock, the farms.

Refrain:

And across the garden path of my father

I saw high trees.

I was a child and I didn't know any better,

That it would never pass.

How simple they lived back then

In simple houses between green

With peasant flowers and an hedge.

But apparently they lived wrong,

The village had been modernized

And now they are on the good way.

See, how rich live is,

They see the television quiz

And live in concrete boxes,

With a lot of glass, so you could see how

Or how the couch is at Mien

And her dressoir with plastic roses.

Refrain:

And across the garden path of my father

I saw high trees.

I was a child and I didn't know any better,

That it would never pass.

The village youth burdocks together

In an mini-skirt and beatle-hair

And shouts along with beat music.

I do know, it's their right,

The new time, it's like you said,

But it makes me a bit melancholic.

I have known their fathers

They bought licorice for a penny.

I saw their mothers jumping ropes.

That village of then, it's over,

This is all is the only thing left for me:

An postcard and memories.

And across the garden path of my father

I saw high trees.

I was a child and I didn't know any better,

That it would never pass.

• Artist:Wim Sonneveld