Attentively
humans have created
problems, throwing one after another
into the empty foreworld

They lacked norms, invented them
and were content with all the virtues
and vices to live from day to day
and also at night

They wanted to control everything
and created gods and leaders
with power, to be cruel
without strife in their hearts

The leaders organized it
with secret police and militia
with torture and contempt
and the people agreed to it

It became evening and morning
the morning of the fourth world
of the taboos and the dreams
of elusiveness and afterlife

Anyone and anything can be dangerous
be careful who and what you touch
also with roommates, neighbours, friends
dear colleagues and nice people

Better keep in touch virtually
just let the machines work together
because for us in the fifth world
it could be fatal

Also worlds that we don't have
and have not even experienced
we can cherish, skaters
on the canals of the eleven cities
and those of Amsterdam

We know it from photos and
paintings, fashion from grandma's time
pharaohs, Indians and dinosaurs
the splendour of microorganisms
and the blue ice of glaciers

where cows now graze, the love
on the faces of strangers
which I look at again and again
or a drawing of a little trip
with the three of us on a bicycle

We save it all
somewhere inside us, in the world
which we built ourselves and
where we feel more at home
than wherever

Once the earth was flat
under celestial spheres
then it became a globe
in the void

with countries proud
to be big bigger biggest
fighting together, up
to the planets

Some say turn turn turn
the world upside down
the Land of Fire on top
Thule at the bottom

but Bucky knew better:
with twenty triangles
he made a new model --
the flat globe

and it may be the future
he shows, with America
opposed to the rest
of the world

I knew my neighbourhood
the streets to everything
I knew

but all those streets
didn't go anywhere
I learned, and I went

on larger streets
into the wide world
to other neighbourhoods

and those streets too
didn't go anywhere
I learned, only

comfortably home again
That's why nowadays I sit still
at home in my Rome, and

one after the other is coming
towards me over invisible roads
fast stars in the sky

of my thoughts

This is what it is about
the field, the floor
clearly visible
in the meantime

without an audience
the breaks between
exercise and cleaning
after the game

when stadium and theater
are lying empty in the light
Dust is snowing
in the drizzle

After the show there is nothing
but the vanity
of the game
and your own thoughts

nothing but field and floor
the polished reality
in which we perform our lives
- in drizzle and snowing dust

They say it doesn't mean a thing
Because we are just mirrors
who kindly greet in return

But still, the baker knows my name
and the postman is happy
that I'm home

for the parcels
for the neighbours
Happy New Year

Looking forward, we keep heart
with good tidings, even though
they say it doesn't mean a thing

that in the rest of the year
calamities will smoke again
crimes and fear, what is normal

will get out of sight
even though you witness it every day
and that we will amuse ourselves again

with the ambulant judge to reinforce
peace with the right, and that is all
it means, they say

Pastures, fields and neighbourhoods
along the long serpent -
the river that connects everything

the spine of the patches
Hemed on the other side
with piles of triangles -

bare ridges, scratched
with wide and empty roads
to one another

Mount Wind is rising above
and much, much higher still
a light line limits the tapestry of fields

Spring, and it's still snowing
above the little ant-people
How fast they live

Twice as high: the heavenly
white strip that unassailable
hovers over everything

Only then the ever blue sky
in which I let me fly, safe
beneath eternity