The mother’s heart

The poem below comes from the collection ‘de Slalom soft‘ by Paul Bogaert.

de Slalom soft. Gedicht.

The mother’s heart



The mother’s heart has ears that never sleep!
I mean to say
the mother’s heart that is made
of shammy leather and trampoline material.
Whoever copies the mother’s heart
and chews on the copy for twenty-four hours gets an
incalculable weight.
Whoever tears the copy, fries it to shreds in the pan,
gets back a great amount of
white smoke and every scent so far.
If one loosens the hooks of the mother’s heart
then it will pop, it will swell up,
it will grow large, too large, unmanageable,
a folded tent that
triple-doubles itself to a zeppelin, which then, cut loose,
extends to something even more extreme and casts a shadow, a shadow
that personally hears children, follows them soundlessly.


Excerpt from the poem ‘HENCE THAT ILLUMINATION ANGLE’
From: de Slalom soft
Translation by Diane Butterman
First published on Poetry International, 2014