When I was a little boy, science was just home-grown intuitions: the night a wave passing over the land, the days trees sailing rootlessly across the oceans, all those lonely oceans that passed through the mind and flowed out into the darkness.
When I looked out of the window the universe faced me, all that glory overshadowed by nothing but the bulb in the street light.
I saw strange men jumping from star to star, and little boys swinging on ropes through space.
There’s the sky!
It ripples like a rich blue carpet. Someone exhales green smoke. When I stretch my hands up into the air, the stars tumble down and twinkle on the street.
…
Have you been, bright swan, to reality’s empty shores, where the angels dance ...?
Old ships sail up to you in a dream and the fog sits down on the sand beside you.
But the lights can be seen in the palace all the same, a yellow-grey gleam, to the accompaniment of the ocean.
…
I was a crazy horse in the eye of eternity. Later I lay watching the sky.
And the sun slipped into my heart.
And the enchanted flame waned ...
…
When I think about the summer I see countless butterflies fluttering around the houses, magical bicycles rolling down the streets and sunbeams glittering on birds’ wings.
…
Still the shadows creep over the houses.
Still the darkness floats along the rootless channels of the air.
Outside, the slush twinkles.
The moonlight gleams.
Beneath the starry glory of the world, the lampposts stand alone.
…
It is cold outside.
Sometimes I stand alone in the darkness.
Sometimes I lie like an island in the cold sea and shiver.
It is cold outside.
Now the stars are staring at the hospital and the loneliness of the bay is dim.
The vacuum of outer space is chilly, the lights in the corridors are chilly, and so are the eyes of the woman at the peep-hole, the drugs on the tray are chilly.
Sometimes I hear the violins of the world.
Sometimes I see the snow-white mountains stamping.
…
I climb up to the peak and touch the stars with my fingers. I take the clouds and wrap them like a scarf around my neck. I fly with the birds and vanish like a whale down into the deep.
…
You don’t leave that place with a diploma. The psychiatric hospital doors close and reality takes over.
…
The madman says he’s dead and been buried. Every Sunday he goes up to the cemetery and puts flowers on his grave.
…
Did I ask the stars to tell me some news? Did the wind bring me tidings? Once, she would welcome me with a smile, once she would laugh at the door.
The autumn evenings were tranquil then. The pavements echoed back footsteps. I remember the raindrops on the leaves, how they lit up like candelabra. Her eyes glittered like jewels in my soul.
Then we would lie down and blaze like the insides of mountains. When our souls erupted, gentle tremors would ripple through the city.
…
No one in my position ought to dream about climbing higher in society than up to the top floor of one of the rehabilitation blocks for the handicapped.
…
When the mountains take off their white coats, the birds pay their visits. The doctor takes the darkness and pours it into a cup, then disappears into the long winter night in his office.
Outside, wingèd time hovers, from a transparent blueness towards a darkened shore. The snow on the mountainsides awakens from its sleep. When the birds leave, the dregs will be poured away.
An exiled blueness knocks on the window.
In the blackness, silent trees sleep.
…
And now, the end is near, the walls are down, the final curtain, I’ll say it clear: I have lived beneath a moon that’s full, travelled each underworld and skyway.
I have loved, I have laughed and cried, and now, as tears pour forth and I find it all so amusing, I say: I did it my way.
No, this grave is not deep enough to accommodate the feelings of us all.
You men and women who jumped into the depths.
You rainy days that wept against the window panes.
Oh how wretched it is, this path of suffering, how little remains and how little exists.
Eternal is the night of silence.
…
Not dying suns.
Not eroding sands.
Only words carved in stone above a grave that flies through the emptiness.
…
No, I am not dead.
I’ve gone to sea. I am sailing the blue sea in the mansions of the father. The father hauls in the nets. We reach the shore loaded down with our catch.
...
Here on these fishing banks of the dead and departed, there is no quota.
Here in the depths of eternity, I am lying cold and alone.
I hear the trees rustling. The morning is bright and blue.
From the dust rises a bird that flies away and vanishes.
…
When I was a little boy, science was just home-grown intuitions: the night a wave passing over the land, the days trees sailing rootlessly across the oceans, all those lonely oceans that passed through the mind and flowed out into the darkness.
When I looked out of the window the universe faced me, all that glory overshadowed by nothing but the bulb in the street light.
I saw strange men jumping from star to star, and little boys swinging on ropes through space.
There’s the sky!
It ripples like a rich blue carpet. Someone exhales green smoke. When I stretch my hands up into the air, the stars tumble down and twinkle on the street.
English translation: Bennard Scudder
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