The former European council president Herman Van Rompuy has taken time off from touring the lecture circuit discussing Brexit and the eurozone crisis to record a song about the power of love over hate.
Van Rompuy, also a former Belgian prime minister and published poet, appears on a song by the Flemish artist Dana Winner. He recites a few lines of verse at the end of Love Always Wins, a ballad to remember those who died in the Brussels attacks.
Winner said Van Rompuy was the “most suited” to take part in her song because he was responsible for connecting citizens in the EU and had worked near one of the sites attacked, Maelbeek metro station.
Van Rompuy said he liked the song’s message that “love is the only answer to terror and hatred”, Politico reported.
The song’s video cuts between Winner’s stage performance of the bittersweet melody and scenes of everyday life in Brussels – pedestrians walking down cobbled streets, a child shyly smiling and people drinking sparkling wine under leaden skies. The final seconds show chalk-filled messages of hope that appeared on the walls of the old stock exchange in the days after the attacks.
Van Rompuy recites the lines:
You asked me: ‘Tell me where the flowers are,’
But you did not wait for my answer.
Because you knew there is only one thing,
Which is stronger than all hatred and all evil.”
The words were written by Winner, but Van Rompuy suggested a few minor changes.
A source close to Van Rompuy said he was surprised and pleased to be asked to take part. He recorded his lines in late September. The song was released in Belgium this week.
Van Rompuy headed the European council between 2010 and 2014, after a stint as Belgian prime minister when he managed to unite the squabbling Flemish- and French-speaking regions.
Until now his best-known artistic works were haikus, the 17-syllable, three-line Japanese poems, which he writes in his native Dutch. The Guardian previously translated several of these poems into English, including this one on light:
Light on the sea is brighter than on land. Heaven is breathing.