Returning to the very same place,
let it be a hilltop
with a view of the night city

where once you used to be,

I take the books left for free recycling mainly for their smell,
I stick my nose among the pages, into business not my own,
then stroll around someone else’s home,
peeping into their kitchen and their bedroom. But once
their smell has faded and the book’s imbued with mine,

It’s very dangerous to know
too many words.

Each of them has its
flip side, which
also has its flip side
and so on ad infinitum.

When I’m writing a poem,
there’s less and less of it.

As I approach the mountains,

Sadomasochistic rain in Leipzig. It slaps the sidewalks.
It sticks its fingers down their drains. It relieves itself
in the city center, then washes away the evidence, so that

There’s good fear, fear can be
good when you’re keeping a family
of Jews in the closet or under

Instead of flowers and annuals in livid snow a forest
of nameplates: Ammobium alatum
(everlasting), Myosotis (forget-me-not),