Leeg

Joris Iven

HOMECOMING

In the early evening I returned from Vilnius. Dusk hung over Brussels,

the street lighting popped on. A drizzle was falling. On my way home

I recalled a Yiddish poet who had spent the war years in underground

hiding-places and sewers. He fuelled the wood stove with his poems

to keep his mother and himself warm. I stared into the red rear lights

of cars and into the rain that spurted in front of me. The houses in the

Vilnius ghetto were once more on fire. And the dead sat up and looked at me.

They vanished as suddenly as they had come. That evening I wanted to go

to the graveyard to dig up my father. Once I myself had thrown a shovelful

of earth onto the coffin. Now I wanted to embrace what still remained of him,

the skeleton of an unassailable body. I wanted to feel the bones I had never

seen. I wanted to hold the skull in my hands to be able to imagine

his face. For that too I had never seen behind the mask that he

always wore. Vilnius burnt throughout the night. I cremated this poem.