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Video Poem: On Mrs P.’s Municipal Coffin by Menno Wigman

By Tom Christiaens, translated by Paul Vincent
30 September 2019 2 min. reading time Moving Verses

Ons Erfdeel vzw and Poëziecentrum vzw asked nine youngsters from the Low Countries to create poetic films based on their favourite Dutch-language poem. Kobe Fleerackers (b. 1993, Antwerp) made a film after the poem Bij de gemeentekist van mevrouw P. (On Mrs P.’s Municipal Coffin) by Menno Wigman, from the anthology Dit is mijn dag, published by Prometheus in 2014. The video poetry project Moving Verses is made possible with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

On Mrs P.’s Municipal Coffin

Is she asleep? She sleeps. After for eighty-three years,
three hundred and sixty-five times a year,
having combed her hair, having walked through the town
in I don’t know how many shoes,
over and over those shoelaces, forks, spoons,
people, what kind of people, where then does she sleep.

She’s asleep and I, morbid as I am, think of
her comb, her nail-clippers and eyebrow pencil,
of how everything, night cream, banker’s card, juncture in time,
is thrown away, erased. And this,
is this embarrassed carting a funeral?
As if you lose a coin unnoticed,

forget your paper on a bored station. Something like that.
Call it tragedy, call it rhythm, time,
that rotten carnivore, always ensures an end
that stinks. But she sleeps now, she sleeps.
So tuck her in and make sure her weary feet
never have to walk the street again.

Kobe Menno Kobe Fleerackers / Menno Wigman

Bij de gemeentekist van mevrouw P.

Slaapt ze? Ze slaapt. Na drieëntachtig jaar,
driehonderdvijfenzestig keer per jaar,
haar haar gekamd te hebben, op ik weet niet hoeveel
schoenen door de stad te zijn gelopen,
steeds maar weer die veters, vorken, lepels,
mensen, wat voor mensen, waar dan, slaapt ze.

Ze slaapt en ik, morbide als ik ben, denk aan
haar kam, haar nagelschaar en wenkbrauwstift,
hoe alles, nachtcrème, bankpas, tijdsgewricht,
wordt weggeworpen, uitgewist. En dit,
is dit beschaamde slepen een begrafenis?
Alsof je ongemerkt een munt verliest,

op een verveeld station je krant vergeet. Zoiets.
Noem het tragiek, noem het ritme, de tijd,
die vuile carnivoor, zorgt steevast voor een eind
dat stinkt. Maar ze slaapt nu, ze slaapt.
Dus dek haar toe en zorg dat haar vermoeide voeten
nooit meer de straat op hoeven.

Tom Christiaens

editor the low countries and deputy editor-in-chief de lage landen

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