Song for those who don’t age

For my mother, Nelly Maes
De laatste bommen van de laatste oorlog
laarzen op de trap
onder de tafel schuilen***

The last bombs of the last war,
boots on the staircase
hiding under the table
I

2022

Before sunset, west of the house,
we see cyclists, a man with child, a white dog.
Her parchment hand follows a bird
from willow to birch to hedge.
De merel has the best song of all, she says.

Her r reverberates the way it did
when, leaning over my pram, she said rust, rest.
I slide the tip of my tongue over the cave entry
to the roof of my mouth – where I sucked her nipple –
until it slips and rolls the Flemish rrr.

My memories of this place are bubbles:
sweet honey in the throat of each nettle flower;
willow that bends and makes flutes;
the whistling between green grass blades.
Even the air tastes of clay.

She points to de reiger, a heron flying up and away.
I no longer age, she says. I am old.

II

2025

A morning in June, at breakfast.
Her face a white flower, her limbs a patchwork
in purples, reds and bits of taupe-black.
Her right hip burst through its bone.
A tabby cat, or is it army camouflage?

Her left foot is broken, wrapped in a cast.
Shingles send spears through her nerves.
She sits, laments not walking,
spoons her yoghurt, inhales coffee,
munches her cheese and jam sandwich.

III

9 June 2025

The radio news reports on Gaza.
Children starved, homes and
hospitals bombed, civilians shot
at aid distribution points.

Freedom Flotilla Madleen on its way
with baby formula, rice, diapers,
medical kits and crutches
to force an aid corridor to Gaza.

Parliamentarians, journalists, Greta Thunberg.
Twelve on a yacht, followed by quadcopters.
My fingers scroll the socials, pin
their position, trail their news.

Eyes widen, mine, then hers.
‘Opgepakt?’ Intercepted? she asks.
‘The ship was hit, caught fire near Malta,
but they’re still going.’

She nods. ‘Ons schip mocht Athene niet uit.’
Her peace flotilla to Gaza came as far as Athens.
She can’t remember when.
I may find it in her poems.

IV

At eighty-four, history is larger than the future.
‘Als je oud bent is je verleden langer’.
When you’re old the past is longer.
Wise, always, she sees present time through past.

Her childhood memory in Flanders during WWII.
A country colonised by Spanish, Austrians, French,
occupied by Germans, then ‘liberated’.

‘Maar niet vrij.’ But not free.

She campaigned for Flemish language and cultural rights,
for zelfbeschikkingsrecht, self-determination,
cycled to the annual peace pilgrimage –
Flanders Fields’ Ijzertoren high above the graves –

vowed to ‘Nooit meer oorlog’, no more war.
She opposed fascists and arms dealers,
and instigated Parliamentary inquiries,
even headed the Flemish Peace Institute.

She had joined the Euro-Arab Parliamentary League,
knew to stop warring needed negotiations.
I recall, as a child, her travels to Damascus,
Jerusalem, the West Bank, but what about Athens?

V

She swallows the last of her sandwich.
I leaf through her New Year’s poems.
Never one for losing hope, we track
her peace voyage across the Mediterranean.
Outside, the blackbird’s song dives and ducks,
rolls r’s in its throat, climbs to a soprano.

VI

1994

‘bevaar de zeeën van de verbeelding
breng de wereld van je verlangens in kaart
bereken je hoop op de stand van de sterren

berg het schip in een haven van vrede’

chart your hope to the position of stars

dock the ship in a harbour of peace’

Notes:

Epigraph from ‘Verleden’, by Nelly Maes, in Heimwee naar de toekomst, Het Oneindige Verhaal, 2018, p26

‘1994’, Nelly Maes in Gedichten: Tussen zeventien en zevenenzeventig, Het Oneindige Verhaal, 2018