The Mountain
I’m replacing a paving stone
I ended up here
Through a regrettable confusion.
Over me
Cars have run
Lorries
Tanks
And all kinds of feet.
I felt the Sun right on
Also the Moon
Around midnight.
The clouds press with their shadow,
From so challenging events and
Important
I developed calluses.
And although I
Stoically carry
My granite fate
I sometimes find myself shouting:
Move onto the carriage way
Of my soul,
You barbarians!
Ladder to Heaven
A spider thread’s
Hanging from the ceiling
Right over my head.
Every day I watch it
Getting lower
They’re now sending me
Ladder to Heaven, I say.
Sent for me from above.
Although I lost a lot of weight
The ghost of what I used to be
I still think that my body
Is too heavy
For this delicate ladder.
My soul… you go first!
Hush! Hush!
The actors
The actors – they’re the coolest!
With their sleeves rolled up
Oh… They so know how to live!
I’ve never seen a kiss so perfect
Like the actors’, in the third act
When sentiments become clearer
Their death on stage is so natural
That, compared to its perfection,
Those in the graveyards,
Those truly dead,
Tragically dead, once and for all
Seem to be moving!
And us… stuck in one single life!
Not even able to live that!
We speak oddly or keep silent for ages
Ridiculous and ugly
Don’t know what the hell to do with our hands.
Shakespeare
Shakespeare created the world in seven days.
On the first day, he made the sky, mountains and soul’s abysses
On the second day, he made the rivers, seas, oceans
And the other sentiments
And gave them to Hamlet, to Julius Caesar,
To Anthony, Cleopatra and Ophelia,
To Othello and others, to them and to their descendants to rule over,
Unto the ages of ages.
On the third day he gathered all humans
And taught them the tastes:
The taste of happiness, of love, of disappointment
The taste of jealousy, of glory and so forth
Until there were no more tastes left.
Then others arrived, that had been late
The creator stroked their hair understandingly,
And told them that they could only become
Critics now
And contest his masterpiece.
The forth and fifth day he reserved for laughter.
He set free the clowns
To make tumbles
And let the kings, the emperors
And the other hapless to have fun.
On the sixth day he undertook some administrative tasks
He planned a tempest
And taught King Lear
How to wear the straw crown.
There were some leftovers from the making of the world
And he created Richard III.
On day seven, he looked for anything left to do.
Theatre managers had already filled the earth with posters
And Shakespeare thought that after so much hard work
It would be worth going to see a performance.
But first, because he was so overly tired
He went to die a little bit.