Ich bin Ein Berliner Ich bin Ein Berliner

Sometimes you don't even know yourself what is going on

Sunlight collapses the night out of balance

I could come to depend on such small moments

The little bit of pathos that is part and parcel of our lives

When all is said and done It is all open to question

I could stay sat here Spring'd come & we'd still be dithering

My heart is in the East My heart is in the East

That's long been known here : these leaves give off this taste

This poem too is being written in Berlin but is not about Berlin

Tell everyone and you'll be just as freaked-out as before

When Charlton Heston acted salvation he meant it

When Pasolini wrote film poems, he meant it too

At this pace you'll not escape the mood of the weather

The rhythm will sweep us straight into amateur shots

This lesson never finishes & the city has no end

High Ride The Streets

sun rays have ripped open the clouds' bellies
the rain has stopped tourists are exhausted
the machinery in my head takes on the beat
of the great empire there's something out there
where another life begins without the echo
of excavations the world around me has unfolded like Spring
in the central core of the old continent a postcard from Columbia
has reminded me once more that there's another world I have not
yet burnt that Tibetan money from the new one I am not
familiar with the Habsburg myth and why are you asking
I am the twentyfifth generation this side of the Carpathians
only a hundred years ago my ancestors shared their room
with pigs and other animals but today we proudly
strut the streets and take to the air in metal birds


* * *

all the worlds communicate among themselves some
how history throws an empty bottle through the window
and you cut yourself Tokyo is overflowing with mini
fictions everything is simple everything cannot be simple
some things you keep to yourself images fluttering it
may already be morning in Africa it is March
trees measure time from within their trunks look
where we are clouds even when we are no more
a brush of the eyes perhaps your touch on my skin
a detail in the collage everything glued together into
a series of photographs faces of the world cities streets
from above the relief of a house so very very
small the silver of last summer's wings
flat corridors of fantasy screens everywhere
different stories same house of history
all the worlds communicate among themselves


Translated by Ana Jelnikar & Stephan Watts