If you are a bad child
in the eyes of your parents
they sigh
oh, what shall

become of you?
Others are harder, they scold
you and demand respect
for the authority

of faith and customs
They think you are a nihilist
because they don't understand you
and because you do understand

you cannot argue with them
But you try
to explain -- no matter how nil
the rules are, there is one anyway:

do the others justice

Down in the yarrow
the princes and princesses eat
green, yellow, and red apples
(toddlers get apple sauce)

teachers share them all day
they ask questions and practice
answers, always something new
under the sun, and then sleep
under the moon and the stars

My head is a bell jar
around my tree of life
dense crown umbels
an ancient trunk

From childhood I hang
my branches full of apples
until they are spent
and collapse under the burden
or break from old age

Yes, I have grown old
searching for connections
I get lost more and more often
(and I eat apple sauce again)

With cursive handwriting, sums and stories
I am exploring the world, six days a week
on a folding table with an ink jar

and at home with Jules Verne
games and fantasy, frost flowers
on the window and a hot water bottle in bed

A quarrel now and then, but peace
on earth and for later the task
of contributing to it, like dad

In the morning we deliver in pyjamas
with empty cans on large trailers
portable gas tanks, and bulk tanks

throughout the country
between the beds. We learn how
to do it, first the crafts

no more than eleven, and then the success
of which everyone becomes better
It's all not so difficult

when you're young. And willing
And don't yet know a great many
And the main issues are sufficient, as for dad

It's another neighbourhood
no longer a theater in the backyard
but homework

with term results and world-
literature in the wall cabinet
There, I live many lives

inside, in the stories
music rooms and museum halls
that expand on subscription

in the palace of my brain
I want to discover all secrets
know the ever singing woods

through and through
receive the gift of discretion
and be happy with it

experience how to live with everything
I know, because I know
well that love is everything

For better, for worse
I am asking, asking
for knowledge of the universe
the commonplaces and
myself, to understand

the earthly paradise
Time after time I am choosing twice
becoming less young and more wise
willingly paying the price
unless it was for the asking

The years of boring, boring
school-hours of gazing, gazing
at bare walls and the ceiling
have turned into revealing
myself by asking, asking
and learning, learning

what to do when, may-
be I better wait and stay
or take a turn and go away
not depend on chance alone
but make decisions of my own

I am talking, talking
with a girl like me
talking tall and small
about ourselves we agree
with the sayings on the wall

We are asking, asking
about the wheres and whos
the manners, the rules, the dos
and don'ts, all the kinds
of problems on our minds

In the meantime I play
the piano every day
The universe was waiting, waiting
for my asking, asking
so I did, and now I'm walking, walking

to spend the odd hours playing, playing
the pianos, still in stock
inside a warehouse-block
I am playing, playing
in a paradise