Poem by the Dutch writer Judith Herzberg

 

HAESJE

There is something of me that I am not.

To start with, while we so wondrously

lay naked there together, I resisted this:

we are not that, that is how we,

compelled by custom, present ourselves.

‘Present,’ I said, ‘in perfectly creased clothes

faultlessly ironed by servants.’

But you, with honeyed words and strokings

where I most preferred to be stroked,

could so persuade me ‘we’ll have ourselves eternalised,’

you said, ‘and later on when we no longer live

we will remain, though held apart

in each our oval painting,

eternally inseparable.

All that was over from our bed – close by

while I tried so hard to

sit still for that portait,

were the fleas, just two or three,

which beneath stiff collar and inside the dress

quite undisturbed – for I was still forbidden

to make a move – burrowed

their pillaging forays.

I put it to myself that in the light

of eternity three fleas would no longer

do much damage. But

now the two of us are long

since dead and even the oil-

portraits, hung as pendants

side by side, my husband’s oval

turned into a square and

acquired by a distant museum –

against all promises thus

cruelly separated nonetheless –

I sometimes in my memory attempt

to return to those days of posing.

What were my thoughts, how did I sit

serene like that, how, as wife of

the well-known brewer, did I stay

so cool, so noble and elevated,

how did I keep out of that portrait

what we at nightime felt together?

while even so I sat on pins

and pins what’s more that pricked.

This poem describes a picture at the Rijksmuseum. To see the portrait, go to here.