Poem by the Dutch writer Jean Pierre Rawie

 

Just something

My mother, who spent her last, drawn-out years

in an old people’s home, had as time passed

increasingly less knowledge she held fast

of things that once had been her life to her.

Her husband was forgotten, joy and pain

she’d maybe known because of him were gone,

her children had now vanished every one –

she’d fed and clothed them, but no trace remained.

All disappeared; she too. What’s most our own,

familiar as our body, disappears,

and what we’d give our soul for will, I fear,

become as nothing. Though my hope’s alone

just something might be saved if one knew how

of what seems indispensable right now.

For other Rawie poems, go to here