FAREWELL

It was a bug that climbed
its branches onto my air pipes
and slowly drained my gasp
or freed it at last.

Now I lie on a street bench.
No bird, no cloud, nobody
will take heed of it.
They will sure suppose
that I only proceed with my conspicuous sleeping,
until the first stone flung from
one of the boy’s catapult toys
will miss its aim at snatching me from my dreaming.

Goodbye spinning planet I leave behind,
full of all the beautiful things we found out
or have them invented for our amusement.
Goodbye unfathomable oceans, blue mountains,
seaquakes, cheesecakes and misguiding myriads of stars,
rapped and ragged rhymes, telegraph and dotted lines.
Public and private doves, the skeleton keys to open
enclosed skies. Goodbye to you, streets, my second natures.
All of you were bits of me and still surround me on the brink now,
though ground seems to have grown so thin, it barely fits my feet...
I have never really gone anywhere without a good company.

My steps just echoed other steps
that stomped along my way,
not only from those who haven’t been born yet,
but also from those who have switched off already.
Thus, from the lamp in my hand trickled
not only the glare which tied my feet to the ground,
but shades were also shed all around,
and this way between the visible and the invisible
my path could tread its hard-won balance.

That is why I know there are no margins in the world.
No walls put up between a side in and an inside-out.
No boundaries of time opposing today and yesterday.
And margins really make no difference
unless we hang on one of them.

I join the ones who long crossed,
in the country where we are all lost,
naked and nameless,
as we used to be before finding
our way out of silence.

But among all the creatures in the world the man alone
sorts out the stirring from the still in an ambiguous whole,
as solely we men walk our deaths all about
without ever knowing what we gain or miss,
we should have noticed better that whatever
we gain or miss can always only go amiss.

Goodbye big archaic capitalistic city,
pimp and rachitic,
my still sneering
fool-bells salute you!

O sweet morning without me!

As I bid farewell, I hope as I had always promised
to have collected all the memories I have ever aroused,
leaving everything just the same way I encountered
on being allowed. Thus, be sure I will disturb you no longer,
abandoning here only this worn backpack
with my non-belongings.

(Please observe that I am an old man by now
and old men do not usually earn acclaim
for the force of their recollection.
In case I forgot any, blame it on chance,
and keep clear my own remembrance).

Now let my words go to the dogs.