Tonight

Tonight I am tired enough

to sleep in the prisons

and in the river beds

under the snow-clad mountains

and I can sink with the ships

chained to the galley thwarts

in the flower scent under Africa’s coasts.

Tonight I am tired enough

to make my grave beautiful

with tormented memories

which become mine only

as bit by bit I forget them.

Tonight I can trace

my veins all the way out

until things go black.

And the weight of my skeleton

will tell me tonight

the height of the mountain passes

I go beyond in my dreams.

I come from late summers of vague melancholy

long as piano lessons in vacated suburbs

where the facades can no longer bear the darkness of the houses

and people have become ghosts in their own eyes.

Where the east wind ravages the yards like a madman

who scrapes his bones clean with a rusty knife

and falls to earth with a sound like Mongolia

and each sunlit wall concludes an entire century.

Where blue evenings sing empty wells through the heart

and each shadow is a trap door in a church

and where I overtake my waiting form on every corner

and walk further, more weary, burdened by a new loss

without quite knowing where I come from

or what it is I’ve sought so much I’ve lost it.

When a person dies

his surroundings remain behind.

The mountains in the distance

the neighborhood houses

and the road that on Sunday

leads over a wooden bridge

on the way out of town.

And the spring sunshine

that rather late in the afternoon

reaches a shelf of books

and magazines which undoubtedly

were once new.

It’s not a bit strange.

But all the same it has

often surprised me.

Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

Tell me before the winds of dawn

Tell me before the seven double locks rust shut.

The machines approach their enigmas with our blood

the poppy fields their distance with our bones.

Our bodies approach their impressions with museums.