Forgotten Journeys to the past, selections | I breathed by you | password world | at night every trip leads abroad | I could have stopped | Refugees run across the meadow

I breathed by you
and the room suddenly became wide
windows in front of my chest
the eyes shut and in flight
houses dangled below me
on their ties
and one room became two
two words four
then strife endless time
and trembling walls
one person borders on the other
civilian life a continuation of war
by other means
how many words are four by four meters
I calculated in my head
and unlearned to divide
the door goes there
the window over there
and a little more wind please
onto the skin

password world
owner certificates for curbsides
houses open and lock themselves
passersby on the outskirts
on leave
fall over
roaring living
by the recreation area
city falcons bred and released
land on the windowsill
and the gutter across

at night every trip leads abroad
an old man and a young woman
two languages
which moves away
which returns home
no word uttered on the way
picture stories drive through the head
the night train
from the last century
been on the run
human beings driven into pits
and back again
under the heaven of the poor
the train is on time
at every border
foreign lands turn into foreigners
one speaks the other language
who are you when you are among them
an old man a young woman
time without train stations would be the longest river
On its route
Unsecured roundish objects made of glass
Above the heads could shatter

I could have stopped understanding everyone

I could have stopped thinking of tea at noon

I could have stopped, in my room, thinking of the eggshells in the
 kitchen, their filling assisting the dough in the oven towards a
 new skin color

I shouldn’t have forgotten that an official petition must be
 submitted for every change of skin color, which must be
 approved

I should have smelled deadlines without thinking of them

I could not have known that the formulation of an application was
 a morning prayer

I should have heard the Father calling to prayer

I should have given up idolizing sleep in my youthful negligence

I should have written down all my laziness and my sins no longer to
 be remembered

I should have known that by forgetting my house forfeits space and
 the only room I have left measures hardly more than a coffin

I could have stopped

I shouldn’t have been allowed to forget

I should have known

How it works

To repent without begging for guilt

Refugees run across the meadow in front of the school
Straightening the kinked flower stems
They do not want to be confused with truants
With the last dilettante escape of the captured
   Stop Halt!
don’t you notice that we want to ride along


Between the berry bushes red and blue
Their stride assimilated they dare
To go up to the vineyards
   there the wood grouse pushed its call
   into the morning breath
between the full branches ripe and round
daylight has broken