A Near-Forgotten Craft

Destruction is space, allowing new horrors to emerge
yellowed pages can no longer be turned
invisible ghosts make you cough incessantly
the painted landscape keeps shrinking
until real places become indistinguishable:
a century-old iron bridge as dark as a bagpipe
now creaks like a knee by the water’s edge.

Punish life by writing everything down
let the sunset hover forever in a still cave.
As long as this book is opened once
everyone will be resurrected, the precise machinery of hell
will start again, with wild winds, hail, and flames
with the asphalt stiffening their joints, the suffering of others continues
unbeknown to anyone.

Reliant on the reader’s sympathy and testimony
time continues like dashed lines in the snow.
Snow falls, falling forever,
yet never falling on the bent heads of pedestrians
always walking in the same place, never avoiding a snowfall.
Few believe in these kinds of games anymore.

Perhaps it’s just a harmless game
which offers us the image of time
like a watchmaker with weak eyesight in his workshop,
where metal parts and various-sized gears reflect the dusk light
through the carved glass revolving door, candlelight, flickers
at the door, an unidentified white horse appears
snorting with contempt, carrying the decay of generations.