I think Grandpa knew what dying is
Would he have understood as a child
how it goes, what it means?
Unfortunately, he was unable to explain it to me

He slipped away, slowly quickly

In Rouen, I saw a painting
with yellow light: two boys
in a boat, a candle at their feet

cut lame and bandaged
Their story has become an image
of dying: the crossing

the mind loses its sharpness
volatilises in mists over the water
It is romance, there is no boatman
punting, but there is an other side

The palm of a hand
is the sign of good intentions
     I am not armed
     that's my gift

so is everything
in everyone's hands
     live with me
     I will help you

My palm says
who I am, asking you
     who you want to be
     for yourself and me

before oblivion
erases who I didn't help
     to grow, and why
     I didn't bloom

My darling does things
that are a gift
     it's her name
     as a sign

If only the little animal could
understand everything
no questions unanswered
when it dies

It does not live long enough
and flying is the time
of hundred wonderful times
of playing to die, the time

of asking again and again why
thus, this or that, and how
curiously cutting and pasting
knowledge, screaming

and throwing away angrily
lying down exhausted
and cry, but still
starting over once more

rearrange or discard
the half answers
and go looking
for new data

always ask another question
principally blind
full of confidence
that there will be an answer

In front of us, the jetty, which at the end
of the road from the bustle of the center
after the hills on the coast, protrudes into the sea

For us, no cemetery today, only the thought
of those we have buried and of the unknown
in the global grave of the sea

For us, the baker got up early, the tea has been picked
the house been built, where we will be guests for a week
under the clouds, the children of the sea

For us is life with its fruits, the rain we drink
and the gravity of everything, holding us together
outlined in the window frame around a holiday by the sea

I am or we are, that is the question
the drama of everyday life
Am I myself or do I join
a group, do I want
cover, but not too many
claims to my freedom?

That there are rules, but
enough options left
to evade them legally
to look the other way
and gain an advantage behind the scenes
even though I know (if I want)
that there is a higher Me

that does not want to harm itself
certainly not want to mutilate itself
with sticks, stones, scimitars
or very civilized in one
fell swoop with the push
of a button

In the dark down
of the tower only the cord
catches light, back and forth
while the bell is ringing

Immediately people flock
to the shouting secret
There is news, the latest news
and they comment on the rope

(decent people are unmasked
  their additional interests revealed
  and underground networks
  unraveled)

but they are particularly
curious about the hands
pulling the bell
there in the dark, down

in the tower, inside
the mind
that cannot be forced
to be silent

After that, the fresh breeze
from the louver holes soon blows
away, the clear sky becomes overcast
and people go

their separate ways again
after the solemn agreement
that it will never, ever
happen again

The books are decorations
only covers, gold-leafed
light and empty, my legacy
in attic racks

I would laugh at it
if I didn't cough
of the dust (to dust)

There's a paper inserted
torn off the certificate
of a birth

A secret. I have been legitimized
Made real with a stamp
I live under a false name

It feels like dying
of the question what
name I would like and what

would it change? This official
document erases my name
I will always think:
It's not who I am

A sphinx in the desert grabs my feet

     What is small, soft and weak
     but stronger than the hardest marble?

     Do not count on what you have learned
     do not count on what you are thinking now
     do not count on what you will know later

     but surrender to the answer
     or burn alive in the sun!

The standing heat and my resistance
against this exam dehydrate me

I lick the salt from my lips
fold my hands above my head
until they sting and get exhausted

my sweat evaporates
my skin is bursting
sand fills the slits

I dream of drops
that seal me
one by one, slowly

making their way deep
into my fibres, and the sphinx nods
She releases me

     Here's a roof
     here's a well
     take a rest and move on

My world doesn't have to be bigger
than as far as my eyes reach
yet they see a new horizon
when I look around over there

     Give me your hand, wait
     a while with going and come
     with me, together
     we can be at home

I will always stand still
on street corners
looking where the sun is
where the clouds go

     Take off your jacket, your fear
     be happy here
     take a bath
     I'll give you a massage

Indefinite scents
blow over the beach
my feet push
bow waves in the sand

This town has stars:
a Walk of Fame paved
by underlords and commissions
with a professional pomp
for international honour

Who fall prey to them
definitely are no longer themselves
They will be extinguished and replaced
by the icons with their names:

Gautama, the awakened man
Jesus, the loving neighbour
Socrates, the man who knows himself
Leonardo and Albert are brilliant
and Judas stands for betrayal

We passers-by echo it
and let the stars shine
to receive as much light
from them as possible

Why, actually?
Why do we betray
ourselves by being dark
not loving our neighbours
and not knowing who we are?

Your mirror image isn't equally
beautiful on all sides
but good enough
and if someone takes an example
to you, it's about something else -
the way you are
the way you behave

an attitude, a virtue
a skill, an understanding
a balance of interests
as if it always goes that way
but you do know
better, you know
yourself

also
mirrored
differently
being
just
good
enough

also mirrored differently being just good enough

I live in a half-home
hours from the city
in a rubble village
from which the youth is leaving
and where I don't hear language
that speeds up my pulse

I recognize the coats
of my neighbours and I think
that they are decent people
strangers that I greet
and from whom I don't want
to know more than from myself

It's all clearly
a question about friendship
whether there are doors
which I open myself
and what choices
I turn over in my mind

Who I am, my jokes
my choice of words and my clothes
all of that seems important

but afterwards I know
every time again
that it does not stick, that

only a vague image
of it remains
with friends and acquaintances

and that it does not have
the consistency of my face
that it only means something

to who-knows-which
people I don't know, who
only hear and see me briefly

Your house can be my house
our house, a nice house
I love you

if you don't want to be more
than I am and want to be more
than you are, not a boy

but a man who dares
to see me as Í see me
then you'll see more

of reality than you think
you see with your self-conceit
Look carefully, look better, I am

not a lesser man, I am
more than your expectations
How far do you dare?

Am I peculiar
because I collect stamps?

Does mom look at me with pity
while cleaning?

Should I please dad
and talk with him about the politics
of the countries I collected?

What's peculiar about a large safe
to secure items of value?

Is it my job to buy the groceries
that mom forgot?

Why do people always laugh
when they hear that I am a member
of the Big Lick Stamp Club?

With ropes in the dark
guys hoist the canvas up
along the poles of the circus tent
the red sanctuary of the gang
of fools like the people on the street
at whom you and I can't laugh

the veteran who lost the war
the silver diva with her wig
the vagabond, the stupid hulk and all
men with the authority of a mustache
ultimately myself too
and my assistant who laughs at everything

A fake nose fits us all
we have a hammer, a big one
bigger and biggest, we walk around with an ax
in our head or a feather on the hat

What does it matter, the curtain falls
and is raised again elsewhere
the music plays on
around and around and around

What you experience, I experience
through your stories, it becomes also my
also my memory, my identity

Your desire, your delight
is also my emotion, my need
my reason of subsistence

The love that embraces you
also warms me, the love
you miss, also saddens me

With you, I follow the choices
that you make, regardless which
choices I would make myself

Your confusion, your searching
confuses me, makes me grope
where you are, on my side

We embrace life
the secrets of our bodies
We embrace, embrace each other

To take care of you, help
others, perform projects of my own
undisturbed, without being troubled

by anyone or anything, or
being
obliged to anything

Show what I'm worth
and then do something
very different

Sit at home together
cosily on the couch
reading about adventures

and suddenly set out
just like that, being free
and still belonging

I want it all

Will anything of me remain? Would I
like to hang in a museum, with name
and age or anonymously

as Woman With Blossoming Branches
better known as The Covered Flower?
A continued existence, as an iconic person?

The photo is still beautiful
You just had to take it
Yes, that's what I looked like then

And when you look at it
who or what am I
to you?

And when you look at me now
am I different, more fragrant
with over-ripeness?

Or do you not dare
to take a good look, are you
not ready to acquiesce yet?

My vision is horizontal
up to 250 degrees
an open visor

of the wide world and all
of myself, except
what is most me: my face

so I have only a faint idea
of who people see
when they see me

Their reactions are familiar to me
yes, I am who I am
but a stranger to myself

and as time goes by
I am less and less
my inner image

I peek at my classmates
who I am, and I try it
out on them, because
they don't know me yet

Not as well as Mum
who already knows who I am
and comments on it
which often stops me

from being myself, from doing
as I please, Mum says
rather take example
by your brother or by us

I find it quite a hassle
to find out how
I am, I think I am
constantly changing

Feelings squeeze
my stomach and belly
the soft parts

They collide and quarrel
with each other and outsiders
cry out the loudest

to the mind which is entrenched
in the skull, watching through the cracks
as an emperor

drawing frames around everything
there is, for he is the order
putting everything in a row

he determines the world
which is mine, full of people
a chaos without me

The morning dawns, I step out of bed
Because I want to feel it, I go through

being born in public, I undress myself
in the street and it feels funny

I caress my goose bumps, it's embarrassing
that I have to pee on the waterfront

We're standing still not to fall
Shoulder before shoulder all together

We're standing still for the picture
like athletes at the start, we stretch, forget

the small hard shelves, the extending toes
and the cold iron between butt and legs

We're standing still as if we hover –
an arch of bellies soft

stretched over the canal
Venuses for a moment

Amsterdam! Free
man of the world you want to be

your wild eyes threaten
my father hand, please, send
an angel, light, a woman
a favourable wind, sweet dreams
someone, something to help you
unbreakable mirrors if need be

Father, mother, earth, universe
make something happen, of course
who sees everything, does not know why
to intervene

freedom would be meaningless
if for adults only

understanding and obedient
everything with measure, giving up
what is beautiful and attractive
and smiling
at the discontented excuses
and lies of the past

You grow up wounded
I too have built, defended
and then demolished
castles and walls -

old men's proud
of the scars of my fight

I may sit on the couch
complaining that it isn't right
however I do my best

to understand it
like so many people
who are not afraid

and yet do not dare
to rely on themselves
I may dream more

than that I pay attention and
put into practice what I know
not making decisions and

living an insignificant life
but I prefer to act as if
everything is important to me

Thoughts are not virtues
and virtues are no thoughts
or superpositional patterns

but magical moments
in visible reality:
my energy

What I do and how
I live and think and whereto
Well, who I am...

Still breathing air
from your mouth and thinking
to be rather us than me

Questions I had, you unexpectedly
asked, so I thought
to be more us than me

Your eyes asked me
without any shield or screen of pretence
to feel who we are, by the sea

you whispered I see myself in you
and I thought to be more us than me
whoever we might be

I want to live, not sleep
bobbing on a bed
of laurels or walk laps
on a treadmill, always

take part in something new
even though you laugh at me -
After every experience I die
and I wake up

in a new experience
That is the story
of my life
completed

per experience -
respond as well as possible
in every situation
Without plot, without end

just like when I was child
You are mature
if you understand this:
Reago ergo sum

In distorting mirrors and family photos
I explore the limits of who I am
In company, I let my body bob
my eyes expectantly hidden

behind a golden curtain of long hair
enticing like a star, with puckered lips
to feel what it is like
to be world famous

and then experience my vagueness
all the more, hidden behind big eyes
like a child in angel wings of sand
with golden keys in my hand

Digging for a new tree
I find bones in my garden
that have lived
where I live now

in a house like mine
maybe the same
dressed with flesh
two eyes and a mouth

a stranger like the neighbour
with his wild hair, in a bathrobe
in front of the window
like so many people

staff and passers-by
people who are busy
and people who are bored
extras, all of them

they act and fill the world
of others without playing
in a play, including me
with the bones in my hand

On good days I am not alone
Then love walks along, a step
aside is easily done, as though
I walk in love's shoes

and feel and know
what love would do, love that
does understand the other

and loves everyone equally
in a neutral, unjustly neutral way

because love is so much greater than we are

So, on good days I walk
in different shoes, I look
with different eyes and I feel
with a different, greater heart

which has room for all kind of things
that people do without love -
as people are: humane

and that is not redundant
no tautology or pleonasm

but a paradox

I have carved thousands of photos
of my life in stone
without my name
let alone gilded
in chiseled capitals

Photos for strangers
who dont live'yet
I have counted and weighed them
their balance is nothing
flat

I ripened, I am softer
and sweeter now
not who I have been
not what remains hard
as if it still exists

With all my experiences
I swaddled myself
in the stone folds
to decay there
and be forgotten

It happened, he died
I saw him lie in state

leaving his house, many people
joined and whispered

It had not been sorted out yet
but his defense was so slight
it didn't even make the newspaper

The bearers said he was guilty
boys threw paint on his terrace
the bells were ringing, a dog started

barking as hard as he could

Always build a tower
solid and in the middle
make a daily round

along the outposts, you learn
from that, also from the wind
and the farmers, sit down

with the children playing
and listen to what they repeat
from their parents and the neighbours

Occasionally beat the drums
but never dig holes
for the dead of tomorrow

plant flowers every season
around the squares and the cities
as a welcome to the enemy

in your suspicion, and pay attention
because the better you look
the more you see