“Now the nights get lost in you”: Antwerp city poet Lies Van Gasse pays tribute to Reinhilde Decleir

Read the poem by Lies Van Gasse here:

There’s nothing you can do without feathers:
you could get lost in this city,
but now the nights get lost in you.

In the seams of your dress, the sides of your coat,
between some itchy notes, –
a piece of Brecht, a joke by Erik Vlaminck,
a forgotten program booklet,
a hastily crumpled poem

– Come by, you said
and you still say that
because your house already opens the windows
to breathe in and out again

and what in that upstairs room
painted state,
need to speak.

A small animal is in its sleep
lie on your body,
on that skin, ever taut.

A girl wanted to look like you.
She wrote something, stuck wings
and stuck at the end of the piece
a dark rose in her hair.

Under the weight of the curtain
that fell with red heaviness,

stifled the applause.

–