łódź
aperture on october
window to courtyard:
biggest photo wallpaper
you ever sat facing
pigeons on roofedge
with clay feet
on god’s conveyor belt
standing still
no wingpair none
whose beat reaches you
an old photo
in overexposed wind
passengers
we weave ourselves
between the
stations
gravel
and stems
on the switches
splinted kisses
against the train’s
clattering on
post
as if you’d
sent your
lungs
a word
coughs
in a coffer
and the lock
balks at
the key
as if it were
your stubborn
mouth
the ovens slept
I
berlin
when we awoke with nests
in our hair we named night
the convalescent fathers slammed
all the traps shut shovel-handed
the ovens slept without shep
herding us into their oblivion
*
II
glauchau
when we were sick from soot
and the dry-bulk of archives
we moved with our grandfathers
into a boarded-up signal tower
watched the old rail guards
set their hands on the lever
through the dead switch line
ran a tremble as of traveling
*
III
malczyce/maltsch
when the discarded wagons
on the sidetrack dreamed
of reloading point at the oder’s knee
of freight chutes and culm
we stole one sluggish car
from its rail from its bed
letting sparks in empty warehouses
leap in our direction
*
IV
The small train stations without a town.
………………………………….Wolfgang Koeppen
but when we scattered out on
an open stretch between sites
since the stars too one says
stoke their ovens above us
we sparked through landscape
that lay like fly ash around us
once more the route through to
the house of the switch operator
*
V
legnica / liegnitz
when we traveled in trains men
who weren’t our fathers carried
the country in hand-braided baskets
(mushrooms beers) drowsily in the compartment
the smoke from their mouths still
hung like night long stuck in our hair