[Pushed out with worn-out furniture] Poem by Lucienne Stassaert

Pushed out with worn-out furniture
her sprung insides show
the joys and woes of an old mattress.
The kapok suddenly releases secrets
and in its lumpy burls
refrains and duets stick:

Come my love, don't withdraw
yet. Feel me over to see
if I'm a stranger once again
asking you the way to today -
I want to disappear inside
a raw body
flap as in a cave beneath the sea.

So bird-swift, with quick jerks,
this duet sounded like a duel
when in the middle of a kissed-away silence
a voice, almost choked, sprang up:
'If you die first, then I will surely follow ... '

Come my love, pull me in
like a snail does its feelers:
I do not want to see the light
that whistles in my ribs -
Quickly set my coil-locked
body on fire: just one more sigh
and the bloom is gone.

Translated by John Irons