Category: Poems

  CHRISTMAS Since the sky is empty, the earth has become fuller with a thousand electric stars and bargains that retailers use to tempt. Shepherds preach a lot—

INFORMATION ON POEMS A poem is sometimes a timid hand, reaching out in the dark to a fellow being. You there, I’m here. I’m happy, I suffer, I’m

I WRITE I write after sundown at home. I write about the morning when I listened to the sound of the lime or to the fire, and only

MY FATHER IS LIGHT My father is as light as a flower when he falls in autumn like the leaves of the book which he ever read in

WORDS As many before me, I wrote I love you in the wet sand and also drew there a heart. As many before me, I saw how the

ELKE REHDER, 1942, EXIL, STEFAN ZWEIG EXILE HURTS Far away, freedom calls and here exile corrodes, threatens us, envelops us, penetrates us, and stabs as if it were

DON’T COUNT ME AMONG THE ALMONDS Make me bitter, count me with the almonds —Paul Celan Don’t count me among them, don’t count me with what was bitter

SMALL REQUEST For R. May God give me a hero and a joyful lover and for the evenings, when none of them is there, at my window, a

DIOGENES goes with his lantern through the woods: Oak, where is your brother, the elk? goes through the village: Dog, where is your friend? through the city: People,

THE WIND He collects leaves, puts them together, in red, blue, green paper written on sheets, pushpins stuck in them. Passing by, he bends over books. his lifelong