The Princess In The Glass Mirror Poem by Peter Holvoet Hanssen

1

In every stage of life is given
A warning voice, it speaks from Heaven

Two thousand mice slept in two thousand matchboxes.
King Rat in his air balloon coloured everything in his flight: a
Friesian cow became a Belgian flag, mooed in shock until
it rained frogs. But still there fell no pennies from heaven.

A lamppost that waved and betrayed a young couple to death. After
25 minutes the girl was reanimated. A white dove that
flew against your window the night she departed this life. Did she call
on the emergency frequency? The dove on the roof stared at you. Don't ask
why. Coincidence or no coincidence: that wavelength. Inflation everywhere.

Brain-dead.
Death leads life in randomly snipped-off courses.
In youth it whispers as a friend.

Is she still alive, pearl-fisherman?
She is still alive.


2

In joy and grief, in ease and care,
In every age, prepare, prepare.

Reynard, you'd amicably asked the rat to leave.
Two weeks later he lay on the lawn. You tattered and torn.

'99 frogs took a horse to Paris.' You saw a raven fly
to the other side of the world to make it dark.
Ice on fire. Mouse in trap. What song haunted your head?
Come, father, come on home with me.

Her pony mourns and dances to the thunder. Silverplate green.
Around her starry bed the family flattened like the clouds.

The magic lantern has been put out.
Mother stays strong, continues talking to her daughter.
Somewhere she can hear me still, she thinks.

Is she dead, child on the pier?
Dead she is.


© Translation: John Irons