Who
Who will be the love of my lover
the master of my dog, the child from my youth,
the old woman at my death, who would that be if
I'm not? You? Please, you're nothing
than two eyes, that see what they see, you're
nothing more than the view: a shining sun,
an apple tree in bloom, a chair standing in
the grass; joy, sorrow, what do you know,
view. But who will make my lover grey and sick,
make the dog howl, the child cry and death come?
Who will make the apple tree wither, leave the chair
out forever in the rain? Somebody has to keep an eye
out to make sure that everything passes.
In short
I do remember the snow,
on the Charles Bridge in Prague,
how you, to this day still laugh
about something I didn't see,
and how you wiped the snowflakes
off my shoulder.
How every meaninglessly complicated
snow crystal stayed behind on
the cobblestones and worse:
that it wasn't about that.
But about a moment
in which we would be more
genuinely together-
I don't know If we were then,
and what you saw beyond my vision.
Language falls over miserably in a sentence like:
do you remember when we went to Prague during
the first snow to stand on the bridge.
And already melts with: we didn't go.
Letters
that I still have to write,
telling that I'm healthy, that I'm ok
that I was drunk yesterday in a greek café
and after that in a Grand café, and yes, also at my local café
that I'm preparing myself for a
really big electric bill
and different things to others-
browsing through a more and more
inexplicable world.
that somebody said:
you expats, you're all the same
while I tipped anyway
wearing French glasses
and carrying German poetry
with at home, on my table
Anne Sexton's superior poem
'wanting to die'
and how I fixed an old lamp
and how he was sleeping on the couch
under a blue blanket
and to whom It may concern
I have to write
that I'm not doing it
that I refuse
that I'm going to sue
that the days here pass by in rain
and that the world is never bigger than a city
and that in that city I
put one foot in front of the other
and what I see when I blink
and that I have to ask how It's going
if that house is already built
and how that other project is going
and how the kids are doing
and if the husbands aren't too miserable
