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What came in you for me?
ancient story
land, drowned in longing
the vessel of Advent
woman the eternal space
the horizon breaks
a word will once reach further
what came in me for you?
We clench our fists
before we are born
the frightened mother
who inward listens
to the sweet umbilical cord
later the child will get
an axe, a flute, a rifle,
a brush, a pencil
a penny in his hand
he will clasp
and he will rise above himself.
THEORY
A child asks for life.
We, as if important,
unveil words, ideas,
but it feels deceited,
wants to make a row.
It will not kick a tree,
rather put a curious
silent finger in the carves,
expecting dreams we forgot,
hearing the growth.
Word became a statue
without a story,
empty imago
you can trample down.
Where is the butterfly?
Who feels the caterpillar’s pain?
A child wants to turn the world upside,
living like Adam and Eve,
who thought things in nature
only with their hands,
raptured by the moment.
A child is a mosaic of blind stones
it needs the detour of your eyes
it heals you at a glance
In every word
it leaves a word behind
for now, for later,
for once and for all.
When it moves its little hand
it sets the world in motion
every step revealing thousand ways.
AT THE RIVER
Snuggle yourself
in the grass of your four years
the waves will pass
the boats will pass
the burnt ones too
the far off sea
just your own ears
your belly, your heart
the ferryman is on his way,
he’ll take you to the sailing clouds
up to now your world
is just the opposite bank
CONSERVATIVE
I’m only seven
I want the chairs
in a permanent place
I want my plate
with my own name,
my old rag-doll
to sleep with
At night
I go under grass
in the cave of a bear
Outside, people are
as naked animals
but I believe their stories
word for word.
INHERITANCE
Mutual happiness:
mother a heart
a dwelling-place
Squeezing patent leather shoes.
You said you left us.
The little girl of six
jumped up to your hand
for the thrilling trip
Later, as sleeping you lay
in white sheets.
Heaven was nowhere,
a dried up holy word
Still searching I am
for this child, this notion,
to prove the God you told me about
ON THE DITCH
An animal – child
crouches in the sand.
It has the hands of young lizards,
the rosy round mouth of a fish
Hardly come ashore
it stretches its legs,
it points out and counts:
tree, butterfly, water, me,
it is in balance with everything,
an ancient work of art.
NATURE
Summer afternoon
walking with the child
her little hand can just span
three dandelions
the yellow meadow shining
the foal a counter-question
in the eyes of the merry
the world shows rescued
QUESTION
Child with the red cap
at the edge of the pond
as a tulip in the snow
wondering how to write
the whitest page
of her diary.
When she runs away
you can read a line and a bow
signal for the question
she ‘s still not able to form
FARM AT THE BROOK
Buckler’s branches
spread out hands full of light
a child calls in the yard
a young dog barks
rustles in the treetops
as ancestral conversation
the water in the brook
walks slowly along
taking with it wrinkles
of unheard dreams
a woman appears in the doorway
as brass in a dark church
she calls the child
but without any sound.
Erica holds a turtle dove,
feels a small warmth in her hand.
She estimates the garden,
the distance between the two lime trees.
Last night she opened the cage,
let the two birds slip
from their former view,
to ripen to freedom.
The couple will stay around the house,
half slave, half free,
fixed between wood and town
as Erica herself, but greyer.
Next year the same other pigeons
will return to the feeding place,
bird and child their own histories
their own fences.
STATION
Found near to the croquette stall
a suitcase and a dog
with a weeping toddler.
Appendages of a journey
because unlabeled
the child seems more lost.
The loudspeakers bleat,
people run along,
a doggy waters against
the lemonade – machine
in which one lonely orange
magically is floating
and all the trains are going
to grown- ups – land.
ARCHITECTURE
It’s said: we are open builders
a bit nostalgia in the design,
I see houses as sculls of concrete,
the light introvert
(here a waving hand
a bulging belly,
there upset eyes
a foot in the air)
in between these threatening giants
we place a child on the pavement,
playing with revolver toys.
NEVER AGAIN
Where is the child
on her way to the music festival,
marching behind the drums?
She passed a blind beggar
on the pavement and asked
‘May I play your reed-pipe?’
He nodded, she closed her eyes
to know how it was to see nothing
At that moment she was aware
of a sort of happy pain
Where is the child that could bind
these contrasts together?
OLD HORSE
Between two houses
on a lawn it ‘s grazing
as if it walked for centuries
to stand there on the last
green place of the world
It nods with dry mane
to a passing child
to the electric fence
and the child behind it
to the prairie of stone
and the child in the middle of it.
ACCIDENT
Some red spots were left
from blood and flower
In the grey morning
she was carried away
wearing the green dress
she liked most of all
Newspapers repeated
questions of guild, a week long,
her place at the dinner table
got the size: infinite.
A child is watching you
in the street.
He suddenly asks:
"Are you going to live here?"
He walks away as innocent
as he yesterday kicked his football
through the neighbour’s window.
The weight of the brand new key
seems to change in your hand
Will there soon be people
into which it will fit in the future?
FAITH
Coming out of the wood
in the open, the little boy inquires:
Was God run out of trees?
In his curious hand
a tiny snout-beetle
follows the lines of fortune
Is heaven in the country?
Are there bedrooms?
And a nursery as in town?
‘I guess it is a very green place
with more trees than houses’
My answer is poor.
How long I forgot every question
about heaven?
GRAVURE
Girl – in – black – white
asking at the threshold of her being:
Are you as I am?
A bird – fish lies in her arms
its back stretches out as an ear of corn
she carries water
air
soil
her eyes are fire.
GROWING UP 1
I’m walking
through my cellophane skin
to enter dreamy subjects:
pussycats, flowers,
willing clouds
the water-voice
I stretch out in them
lengthened, refined
I don’t like to know so much
and very vaguely about ‘him’
the world is my protein
but I am fear to grow.
GROWING UP 2
I think of you as my brother
my tower
carry me
high above the ground
if we should fall:
just circumstances by sun
seeing you as my family
I can believe you
as ivy I climb in you
my strong wall
let us laugh together
to avoid the bodily riddles.
GROWING UP 3
The edge
remains around the mirror
around everything I do
around the days
I fit in this dry land
yet I feel naked
a cell without water
how to grow at full length?
Things I touch
are hiding a promise,
difficulty and mystery
my skin calls it up
So I escape the mirror
break out of the words
of the bosom-water dream
then I create a dry beach
for new eyes
but the frame, who fills it?
GROWING UP 4
I imagine
to make your arms long
and full of mercy
as rivery signals
to my dried up land
I am an ear shell
behind your voice,
with photo-sensitive soles
I walk behind you
When I imagine this
- how hidden away –
I hang as a bat in your armpit
because of our short summer.
GROWING UP 5
Today I hear sharp
how the mountains are settled
I play slowly
the lute of my feet
I hear carillons
in far away towns
I hear the leaves fall,
the aftermath of a storm,
for the toughest animals either
My ear is grazing,
I listen tensely to the earth
while wandering around.
I feel myself a pollen
without a bee, just waiting.
YOUTH
We want to stand
in the middle of the world,
in space
to be a sculpture of intention
simple, with clear roots
the house says: I isolate
the tree says: I carry
the sky: I’m borderless
the street: I pass on
as a human being
I am tree and sky
and street and house
always flying from the measured word,
thrown back into my untranslatable body.
TEACHER
Children interweave my days
Sometimes I must give a tight warp
to their restless deft
I may not forget my humour.
Then I try to remember
how a bee lands on a rose
how little the flower is stirred
without any damage
My words will not be worse I hope
What did you learn today my child?
A new word: ‘interesting’?
What is an automatic pilot?
Is penalty the same as penance?
Or raise 3085 to a square?
To morrow
your teacher will rhyme better:
play ground compare with society
God loosen from command
bird disconnect of bullet
heart and brains wish as one.
PUPIL
Processions of flowers
pass the language,
meadows of many wanderings
push the words aside,
speak in waybread and timoty-grass
it ‘s nearer to us
then everything we must learn
or learn to unlearn it.
Who teaches us the new names
when the years will do
what they have to do:
repeat themselves?
Who makes that we see
the world again as rare?
We are still familiar
with own home and garden,
used to compare
every distance with them,
we ‘ll recognise all the trees forever
from the one in front of
the window of our youth.
For now disguise us
the bare truth, use
the language of sunflowers
of wood-warblers, saying:
you are created for love
TEST PAPER
We bite our lips
pens and nails
we search in our paganinic heads
for sounds to rhyme
on the stupid questions.
Wild music sparkles in our eyes
our legs are aerial roots to hover on
woods of inconvenience we are.
Give us more poetry
to huddle around
to raise our lonely hearts
we ‘ll stretch out pleasantly
and rest together in ourselves
EXAM
Child, put those words
straight on the parking place
near to the pole with an A
watch the keeper
of one metre ninety
his square eyes
his heart metronome
here a word
will be blocked as a word
you should know.
In autumn we envy
the privileged trees
stripped from leaves
the branches keep the tension
of pure dark snares,
the wood a bright harpsichord
winter repents
to strong concentration
silence
trunk
only a passing child
will hear the deep hum
of the hidden sap-streams
PLEA
Don’t teach me too much,
you pour honey into flowers
I want to be kindly satisfied
but let me be visited
by bees of doubt
Won’t my truth die with me?
Between heart and mind (intelligence)
truth will be lost.
It will grow
between soul and soul
heaven and earth
breathing through the days
Come truth of ear and eye
of nose and mouth
of head and skin
of whole myself
where I find my protolanguage.
Tomorrow we ‘ll be different
in the same clothes.
CONFIDENCE
Love is magic.
The eyes of my heels
the fingers of my hair
the unwise contradictions.
You take the chaos
of one daytrip
I’m healed and sing
Often my toys are lost
ruined, come undone
wasted away,
but again and again
you will save me.
The wind says: go somewhere
get rid of the wing-seed
it will find its roots
it hasn’t any wish
The father says: go somewhere
he gets rid of his child
but it’s leaving already
with focused eyes.
It asked for a kit bag
a Beadeker Travelguide, a Purpose
but it doesn’t want to know
where it will settle one day.
PARENTS
To know it will appear,
not yet named paradise,
between the land we have to loose
and the land we cannot conquer
an isle of hope
not wider than two hands
lift up your child, high up
give it the chance to look around
worldwide and straight into people’s eyes,
teach it to understand Judas and Jesus
to recognise them in himself
then make his choice
tell the Holy Stories of mankind
but show their same purpose
and mystical start
In origin it will be man and woman,
you and me, the neighbours
the opposite neighbours
the far away neighbours
Love is always the direction
from which it will come .
THE ROAD
Silent flowers support the dialogue
What changed since you left?
Every child takes saps from the womb
every eye a verve of home landscape
every swimmer silver skins of water
Yet the interrupted wave will not diminish
the sea remains equal
the land remains itself.
Mankind combines angel and dinosaur
every movement is re-membering
exchange flowers to be silent
to be fluent to the other
allow life to grow to its dream
‘WORLD VIEW’
Listen with the ears of your hands:
children’s hair sings a high A,
touch with the eyes of Tau butterflies
their skin that feels as feathers.
Follow them in the wavering greens
of their chamber-corner’s certainty,
carry the questions on their frail feet
to the space of happiness
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