If anything should happen to The Hague, if someday they abandon Amsterdam, philosophers will take these strange and vague descriptions, and derive each tree and tram by mathematical necessity: should nations shake their fists across the seas with words of war, it follows there must be a middle ground, a people loving peace. And is this scrap alone a netherland? Not so: we spend our nights beneath the sky, and every country's low for us, who stand a thousand miles below the lights on high; if only I could learn to live as such, and count myself as kindly as the Dutch.
Written, with thanks, for the organisers of GUADEC 2010.