After today's four steps
I'm sitting in socks by the fireplace
My heavy boots are standing straight
and my back is still rattling

I am a henchman
I push the boundaries
of the ladies in love
and the rich gentlemen

I leave horse turd behind
and take the scent of freesias with me
The water in the bucket sloshes
like yearning love

I don't travel alone
We are armed
The papers are precious
Sealed letters

Beginning and maintaining
of relationships and major interests
Between the stops, the reins
of fate are in my hands

Everything flows, a coming
and going of opportunities
Flags blow everywhere
but I don't put poles
of certainty around me

My work and my relationships
are fluid, my fate
is not in my hands
not even in the lines
that fortune tellers read

Pleasure for myself
idealism for all
between the flippers and
the facades of the day and
the dreams of the night

The flippers of catastrophes
and consequences bang
on the bonces of power
the wheels of money and
the cannonballs of contempt

God's wisdom is above all
above the impossible, above time
and the sigh of the ages
in which man exists, it is
contained in everything as miracles

in day and night, stars and planets
in donkey, bull, ostrich and vulture
the hippopotamus and the mighty crocodile
the unimaginably many ways
the animals live

and in every drop of water, dew
hoarfrost, rain, hail, snow and ice
No man can comprehend that
nor his own presence
and the course of his life

so tiny in God's hand
who needs not direct anything
for his wisdom automatically
creates - also misfortune
and the evil of men

When they are at your door
you already know, it already is
too big to comprehend

Heaven does not help me
I don't understand the higher purpose
of the war, I can only hope

for an outcome that gives it meaning
We are promised soft flesh of fruit
but we are given stones to eat

The odds turn, coalitions change
and we stay behind, without help
and love we just plod on

until a disease releases us
from the hard life
we never dreamed of

The green angel is everywhere
I want to take revenge on her
but the horses snort

with happiness, ears forward
I am licking the stones
but they remain hard

They rain down on me
and tear
my clothes

The men look away
I cannot believe them
too bitter is the aftertaste

of their love, too hard
around my heart the clamp
of the law they preach

as if they were green servants
of a providence
that does not allow mistakes

Black sails, thunderclouds
flooding all the shores
all the shores of love

               Attica (Aegeus and Theseus)

Everlasting love
from parents to their child
unconditional and true

But fate is ignorant
and joy makes one forget
the preconcerted sign

Black sails, thunderclouds
crying for our son who died
Is my life worth living now?

Behind the clouds, the sun shines
the hereafter beckons me: come
perpetuate your bond

               Brittany (Tristan and Isolde)

Everlasting love
the poison innocence drinks
compells the soul to love

Jealousy can be a tonic too
even white hands can lie
when it comes to love

Black sails, thunderclouds
crying for my love who died
Is my life worth living now?

Trees grow out of the graves
and their branches intertwine
inseparable is their bond

The captain will have been informed
because he says nothing about the situation
and that can mean anything

There are reports of peace
and cleared blockades
I must make choices

while I have a good life here
with my family that arose by itself
in the house that was assigned to me

So I just go to bed now
and before I sleep I travel
beyond the known

Left alone, I move on
     accompanied by echoes of familiar laughing voices
     that conceal the truth from me

     the voice of the guide who prefers to stay at home
     of the soldier in his worn-out uniform
     one of the three of the garrison

     who could be on duty
     who fills the cups and drinks on me
     on the health of all people

     around the tower of Belém and everyone
     at the long table with the empty seats
     from the time they were here with many

Along on foot, over a mountain
path, through a dense forest
I'm running out of food

Every morning after the reveille
we hold a bicycle race
from the camp to the Meuse

At full speed I take
the last turn, right
into brand new barbed wire

invisible in the light of the sun
As proficient torturers two others
are colliding with me immediately

Flat tire, torn clothes
In a comic strip, I would be
hanging horizontally now

But I fall, rips in my flesh
gaping and bleeding
Bandages at breakfast

and then I lead my patrol again, what else
after the inscrutable providence
of a farmer who's going to pasture on the river?

Pee carefully, girls on one side
The boys do it the farthest and nonchalantly

We sit in the gutter, how my buttocks ache!
Jerome pushes up himself, he just can not hold on no more

inclined backwards he leans upon the tiles
of the roof, but doing so his legs get tired

His mother is worried, so she begs, entreats
him: boy, take care, what if the bracket breaks?

Then, then, well, then your body will be doomed
Oh my dear boy, then I will also die of grief

But soon enough he sits astride upon the ridge
and downstairs strikes the clock again, what time it is

It takes some wrangle till René gets almost nude
He plunges in the house and grabs a lot of food

the greens are washed, the pizzas flabby, hard the wurst
A feast for all, along with drinks to quench the thirst

we are in need of water and there's no boat, oh why?
Come, action action action, otherwise we die!

In the museum, we look
at the attendants: a gangster
a beach girl with sleepy eyes
and a man who's almost falling
but he startles and hobbles away
to the hall with glass tombstones

We see people wait
gloomily, enjoy
a cigar at the end
suppress the disaster at the piano
with a smile, scream to win
their case with their husbands

or cry and jump in
the lifeboats sauve qui peut
(la vie)

Well, I may drown
freeze to death overnight
under a tree, just

grow numb or be lucky
and get a place
to sleep in the shelter

under the hundred beds blanket
with a head hole for each
comfortably warm together

But even then, this morning
my neighbour didn't wake up
at the first, second and third gong

Floundering he went up
when the blanket was hoisted
Under the beams he hung still

a skinny body -- we watched
and for a half we each fenched
an incense stick

There is no certainty
in anyone's hands
where it is going

Just sit down
at the promenade
and watch the people

Most of them are free
and bored, not really
on the way, sometimes tired

sometimes with children
who have no idea
together, on vacation

from sports, games and school –
learnt in the cradle, lasting long
but nothing happens

different than usual but
licking an ice cream
just like flies

you can catch
if you are handy and fast
because they always want to eat

and like fathers and mothers
for their future only
have worrisome wishes

I had to choose the richest
otherwise they would have started a fight
because of me, it seems they like nothing better

where is their sense? In vain
I cry tears about myself
that don't change a thing, nowhere

between the curtains in the inner rooms
my beauty is safe, my soul searches
not knowing what is true for the love

of my strong man in my lap
to surrender free from fear
and become a mother, be

a good wife, not bothered
by a eastern prince who
enchantingly plays the flute

to take me with him on his horses
of the sea to a palace
on waters that are glinting

with misery, bringing ships packed full
of clouds and throwing my blossoms
back on the pebble-sand