Schoolboy’s Blues

I went to school when cigarettes were sold by the piece.

Now comets whistle and shoot across the black sky

of the town. I still live here, still among the shapes

of forgotten things they force into daylight, still amazed,

after all the long years, when it should be clear to me

that during German grammar exercises I wrote notes

in vain about a man who looks through window blinds.

I still don’t understand them, but wish to, so much

that it hurts sweetly in the twilight, in the tepid air,

that I would learn a hundred languages and orbit everywhere

like a guest at my brother’s wedding and I would hover, yes, like mist

on the flowers in a greenhouse, and I wouldn’t know if it drips

damply from a heavy sponge, with which I wipe everything

behind me, traces of all field trips, only this time, one last time,

I sign up without coughing fits and chewed-over words:

I will arrive like a peasant who burns nests and loves pigeons.