Sunday 4 April 2021

Hagar Peeters: 'Kanttekeningen van de muze'

 

THE MUSE’S MARGINAL NOTES 


IV


Don’t lay your hand on my hand when I’m holding a pen. 

Even when I’m not holding a pen I’m gripping one.

It’s the air between my fingers I caress.

Sometimes I stroke the world with it.


Your tormented heart’s too bloody for me.

It pounds too hard, a headache’s what I get.

I want it stripped of all that’s tangible.


Your written voice is more melodious

than all the words you say to me each day.

All pales though if compared to black on white.


Your mouth is just unable to compete

with the description of how your lips meet.

Your mind’s too full for me, your thoughts don’t 

fit in next to mine.

They can only amaze on paper.


An actor can really weep while feeling nothing

yet all my tears congeal

before they fall to form small paper boats

because a ship capsized inside me.


Every word’s a sailor on a paper boat

each letter is a sweetheart peering at the mast,

the meaning an aster, an anchor

but please use real arms when you hold me tight.

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