Down in the yarrow
princes and princesses eat
the green, yellow, and red apples
(toddlers get apple sauce)

Teachers share them all day
they ask questions and practise
answers, always something new
under the sun, and then we sleep
under the moon and the stars

From childhood I hang
my branches full of apples
until they can't hold the weight
and collapse under the burden
or break from old age

Yes, I have grown old
Searching for connections
I get lost more and more often
(and I eat apple sauce again)

I had to choose the richest
Otherwise they would have started a war
because of me, where is their sense?

In vain I cry
tears about myself
that don't change a thing

Nowhere between the curtains
in the inner rooms
my beauty is safe

My soul searches not knowing
what is true for the love
of my husband in my lap

Not bothered
by a eastern prince who
enchantingly plays the flute

to take me with him on his horses
of the sea to a palace on waters
that are glinting with misery

bringing ships packed full of clouds
and throwing my blossoms
back on the pebble-sand

that it soon will be over

that I'm not here, not now
that I feel everything I don't want
that I feel nothing but aversion

that I fell into a sinkhole
that I might be filmed and
that I'm not recognizable, he is, so

that I have proof

that I dare to show
that I don't know who he is
that I'm afraid of what's to come
that I'm going to die painfully for the reason

that he infects me incurably, but also
that he himself will perish much worse
that he will be humiliated by everyone
that he wishes himself miles away, of misery
that he falls into a sinkhole

that it will swallow him up frightfully, yes
that it buries him alive
that it dazes him in a scary dream

that he roams in it for years
that he only after that will fall asleep exhausted
that he wakes up from his delusion again

that I stop him with love
that I receive him with love, but
that I don't get pregnant

that meanwhile I'm thinking all
this

I was such a child myself, ten years old
I came to the institution, unwanted
and ignorant how

Till my brother found me
between the infants of my class
and told me how

I was 37 when I got a family
I asked them for shelter
but they didn't know how

So I stayed here and grew old
wrapped in sheets of folding paper
keeping back how

suffocating my life is
No one smooths out the folds
No one knows how

Every ten years I live
in a different world
with different wishes
The old ones have been
passed by new circumstances
The memories remained

Content with what is close
I occasionally cherish
what was, the friendship
we still feel, even though
some discomfort has crept
into our encounters

We live too far apart
and want to, don't want to
move towards each other
How well do we know each other
as we are now, do we know
those who we embrace intimately?

My house has empty rooms
without an echo, in which contemplation
is not possible, I'm driving myself
crazy

My heart is pounding, my otherwise
so silent breath sounds
awfully sick, the intestines
grumble

and something uncanny toxically whips
the spinning top of my thoughts
I lose my balance

don't dare to stop
thinking, cramping arms and legs
braced against the blow
of falling into silence

Is fear of panic already panic?
Is thinking to become crazy already too late?
Is emptiness the echo
of what has been?

We come unsolicited
from flower cones and memories
across the borders, we charm
friends and foreigners
with the scent of freedom
the balm of warm-heartedness

and being uncompromising
to live small and silently
to ignore the yoke
to the utmost
to pay attention only to the springs
and the summers in the wind

and to find ways
in night and mist
to meshes in the power
to do what is forbidden
to help where it is not allowed and
to sabotage what oppresses

The roof-gutters drip
into the occupied city
After a night of lying awake
from injustice and death

we go outside and show our lives
worn with age. Look, this is how
it should be, growing old
with wrinkles and skin spots

Our silent march rustles and sighs
a little, sometimes swarming
together for a moment
to music from our youth

Mother Earth, farewell
I must go now, my time
is over, my life is lived
Farewell, farewell

     The globe is beautiful
     little and precious
     the universe big
     I float away in it

Dear people, farewell
you can go now
you have to eat
you have work to do

     I love all of you
     and you the most
     I hope for peace
     It's light here

No one hears me anymore
perhaps they've already left
I can go now
Ten

nine
almost, eight
seven, six
five, engines on

four, three, everything is fine
two, brace yourself
and one, on my way
Have a good trip, a good trip!

My evening walk
through the streets and the park:
all the beauty of day
gradually disappears

into the beauty of the night
that darkness full of life
that has conquered the world
by colonizing the light

From the beauty of the night
I go to sleep to then experience
the beauties of the day rested
and to walk around with them

in the evening
through the streets and the park
and then to go to bed
without disappearing into the night

She lives at the end
of the golden-yellow lane
which lights up on the other side

My comrade has often
stopped me, did not let me
sink into my longing

did not let my feet shuffle and rustle
through the autumn leaves
to go to her

to the little smile around her lips
in the pearling air, smelling
of incipient decay

thinking of her soft skin
her warmth receiving me
Now I go

I do not want to stay here
anymore, not to be without her
anymore; I straighten my back

and rise from the trench
She lives over there
at the end

I strayed off
no weeds over here
time rushes by
on a busy track

Full trains without me!
Replaced by someone else
so I hope for my colleagues

Don't worry
we'll be fine
you do look very good
you are free!

Wagons of words!
I am alone here!
On raked paths

I wait for wind, the skippers wave at me
but I am just as ready for the sea
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
I'm lying in the harbour, lying on the quay
just bobbing in the harbour, this and every day
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
My plans are stored away, are stored away
provisions for tomorrow, for another day
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
I'm staring at the sails, I stare and keep staring
at easy ins and outs, the moving, moving
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
Those sails are tight and bulging, not a rip or tear
while nothing happened here, no, nothing happens here
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
I watch the skippers sailing out, they roam and roam
but I don't catch the wind, and stay at home, at home
     There is no wind anymore
     not a breath of wind anywhere
There is no wind anymore
not a breath of wind anywhere

Shall I continue
to wait
alone at the table?

My eyes jump
and wave Help Help Help
Ships sail past

I cry
louder and louder
with my shoulders
but I'm invisible
City and county are flooded

ships are sinking
packed
Help Help Help

Oh shall I
shall I continue
to wait?

I'm just hanging
around the house
all to myself
the pot of tea, the table

the rooms of our house
with its new windows
the scratches in the cabinet
all the presents

that I gave to you
and the poster of the glistening
water on the horizon
with the shadow of a ship

I'm just hanging
around in your absence
incapable of action, so strong
and close is your presence

Where the white land is green and young
but the songs still mourn

for generations gone
in the mists of waiting

on the mountains across
where life is hard and old

where the fireplaces always burn
marmots raise their noses

by the elderly sitting there
picnicking and painting

the creeping broom and the round table
beyond the camomile fields

on the mound behind the heather walls
and the fern hedges in the narrowdale

that still are waving there on the helmets
of drowned iron soldiers

I muse about life and I eat
chocolate at the camel river

Today no mists on the hill
where once stood the Lion Fort

People come here only occasionally
They bring money, night and day
the front doors are open
adorned with gilded carvings

I cried at the farewell
Daddy's hands on my shoulders
mama's kisses on my head
I was a chosen child

but I didn't cry for joy
I cried for all the years
I dedicate to the fire
in this temple of support

This is my fate
in a holy covenant
with the fate
of the others

Shrubs protect the back door
muscular guards close the bolts
We live concealed in the middle
around the square of the sky

above the well in the courtyard
Sometimes a sparrow hops in my hand
All of us count down the years
We have become a woman

without the permission to be so
for everyone who kneels
before the fire of the earth
burning for the unity

of the country, the bond
of the great men
who knock the code at the back
the men we wash on the bed

in words of praise
We take off our robes
and kneel before the throne
of their hopefully infertile power

I celebrate my desires
on the templebed: doing
nothing, watching and smelling
what the priest is describing

they told me so in advance
An exercise
to relax myself in a cave
in the wild of the mountains

His words anoint my nerves
and untie them from the inside
of my entrails, they wash me
off with warm attention, recover
my muscles and my soul

I want to continue living this way
Let it go, let it go

that's the exercise
my only chance
to hold it

In the last darkness
before dawn, after the party
I wander through the city
my familiar city

The sky is clear
I have no idea
what I would want

The river glides by
Empty quays, no traffic
silence around the monuments
and everything neatly swept

Naked people made
of marble and paint
live in the museum palaces

The princesses play cards
in the basement of the servants
and my steps resound
in the floodlight of time

I was young, I went

to experience grand beauty
on hands of success, and now
I walk on clouds

of electric light
glitter and admiration
celebrating my retirement

in the heaven of parties
star among the stars
the smiling beautiful people

their pearls, botultox and gel
in semi-gray hair, tireless
in time to the brass

Nobody needs to go to the toilet
we are hovering over the beds
in which despair tosses and turns

because of the days and the years
of dreamed lives, and we dance
the conga since we are going

nowhere

No storm, no silence
a deep swell
of myself being
lost in myself

My organs merge
Fast fishes wave
under the skin surface

A forgotten desire
flows out over my cheeks

Look

My hands
They should do something
But I don't know what

Nobody needs me
Boring days, empty hands
Leaves in the wind

And sand
I'm watching the sand
Look

A photo
Lace curtains on the windows
And a shadow behind it

Mama, you know
It's you
Look

Our house, the garden
The arbour where daddy had coffee
and was writing

Here you are reading
On the swing, just like now
in the rocking chair

But you don't read anymore
You watch
TV, that's all