ABOVE THINGS
Well, let’s go on playing.
Down—everything flows past.
Up—everything flies off.
And you,
entering the halls of light,
are looking at the cloudy conditions
murmuring:
“They look like snowmen.
White giants licking candy floss.”
“Did you hear that mankind was getting on in years?
Snowmen too lived more and more.
Children grew up even
faster.
They matured in all respects.
They got disappointed.
They emigrated into timelessness… And
the snowmen had to wait for them even longer.
They turned into snow dwarfs—
sick of spring,
with coals gone blind,
with pecked out carrots—
hunchbacked gnomes blazing
a way for the global modernness.”
“Wait, this looks like a self-portrait.”
I have never liked
tales of giants and dwarfs,
of children run away,
of stolen paths
and of the global warming.
But, after all,
in order to have something flowing,
something should be melting.
And to have things flying away,
one must be above things.
When my mom had no cash to buy me skates,
she would say:
“Be above things.
Come, let’s make a snowman.
Or a cloudman.”
“All right, mom, all right.
All that has happened.
Look, I am the cloudman.
But where are those unhappy things?”
Strange rays fall.
The airplane descends for landing.
Everything feels heavy.
Everything strives for the earth.
Except the soul.
Translated into English by Valentin Krustev & Donna
Martell
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