The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

[p. 210]

Five Poems by Elisabeth Eybers

Elisabeth Eybers (1915-) (Photo by Hans Vermeulen).

Precaution

On your front pane a slogan could be stuck
to fend off everyone who tries his luck,

like: no repairs, nothing to buy or sell,
we have been saved, please do not ring the bell.

So none of those who cannily advance,
collectors, knifegrinders, would stand a chance,

no Seventh-day Adventists or carpet-sellers,
Jehovah's Witnesses, woodworm-expellers.

Oh, how you shun and - jealously? - abhor
those profiting by going from door to door

and tracking down the rest without excuse,
down to the most inveterate recluse.

But don't forget that someday you'll be hailed,
care and imagination having failed:

where will you find a motto to repel
that summoner, the angel Azrael?

From Collected Poems (Versamelde gedigte, 1990)

Inspiration

Something grabs hold of your dusty words,
shaking up, pinning down, shoving aside,
it slinks away softly when satisfied.
If you cannot evade it, cajole it instead,
think of it rather as sleeping than dead.

From Collected Poems (Versamelde gedigte, 1990)

[p. 211]

Palimpsest

The years of loving come in handy now,
because you still remember how it was
there's no untimeliness about the past,
communion blooms without a binding vow.
Occasional happiness is known to be
well within reach and able to outlast
the damage wrought by time and treachery.
When it comes surging up, then all the rest
from long ago just acts as palimpsest.

From Tijdverdrijf / Pastime (1996)

Famous Last Words

Last words usually can't be relied
on to sound somehow famous; indeed it is true
that I've recently felt quite erratic
and oftener than not in two minds what to do
in the ebb and flow of moods which implied
no visible hint of the vatic.
The last thing I said to myself when I died
was: don't be so melodramatic.

From Tijdverdrijf / Pastime (1996)

Legacy

My father as well as my mother
I perpetuate as it were,
my long limbs stemming from him,
my thick shock of hair from her.

Calm and completely unsceptical
he meditated. Meanwhile
nothing, no matter how venerable,
could wipe out her searching smile.

They came to a compromise
through mutual disparity:
I had to pay the full price
of their proneness to disagree.

Finally in my eighties
I'm able to bear with them,
every man jack vanishes
and no one is there to condemn.

Only: they are seldom at rest,
anxious to have it their way:
I find that keeping abreast
gets more bothersome by the day.

From Verbruikersverse / Consumer's Verse (1997)

All poems translated by the author.