Nanja Noterdaeme, Change (10 small Spring poems)

Great-Autumn-Forest-Road


I

I don’t do things
I don’t copy the poems
I watch the butterflies
The butterflies pass
The man comes by
Gives me water
The weather goes by
Gives me flowers
The sun also walks by
With the time in its pocket
And gives me a light.

II

I watch a friend pass
She’s young and
walks like an old lady
Small steps
each step a rest
Da capo a little she bends
in black
A dressed
In black bent old
friend passes
bent and black in lent.

III

I wear my glasses
that everywhere I forget
I cannot read the pages well
The pages in a rush
run to the other side of the street
where you are not,
Any more
But the pages want to greet you,
Laugh about it all
It’s such a mess.

IV

Put together the pieces
The pieces and more
pieces of shriveled
designs, crooked papers,
Paper words
Lit a fire with the
deeds of evanescence
that still fuel
ashes of burned desires,
smoke of unborn ghosts.

V

There’s a tiny baby
A mini meteorite in my
coffee cup,
laying and waiting
to be born.
Could it be the corpse
of a Syrian child
wrapped in a white sheet
Could it be that
forever we mourn
what is yet unborn
and that the death
of the already dead
stops giving us any pain?
Could it be that
wrapped in white babies do not outlive
a butterfly, could it ?

VI

Down with the bike
to the rails
Swinging into a curve
Old kid, age fifteen,
long sleeves float from
your flabby jumper
winter after summer
withered basket shoes
searching for a kick
a twist of meaning
on the railway tracks
spring popping up.

VII

The drunken wasp flew turning on its own
drowned into the water,
scratching a spoon.
A voice gave an order
and some saw a little man bloom:
“The heavy part is mine!
I want the role of the executer”!
He dressed in black,
put a belt to his waist
The arrogant play started
A one man’s show joined by
drunken wasps in a one wasp’s show.
They put a gun into their belt,
and power is the drunken thing they felt,
and we the buzzing sound.

VIII

And than it stopped
A few drops left
Leftovers of
Grief some rain

Someone was listening
On the roof
It started again

Hesitating solitude
Not knowing what to do
With a powerful horizon
Too vast all of a sudden
Too fast.
Rain, no rain
Rains raining all over again

At loss with history
Tears converted into centuries

IX

Winter bones
crawl in a wooden soul
March fuels the bonfire
of late awakening and again
the rain carries it all away
A wave of light licks
The feet of dawn

X

You do not learn this
It is
You learn that it is.
Just like that
All over again
The blossom
The southern wind
The flower carpet
Purple my lovely Lila
Easter and in no time
scent subdued to
a split eyed summer hat.

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