On the ladder of pain, others sadder than we are
Are climbing up and down constantly
I watch them from my balcony, when they come and take out their garbage

Because right behind my building, by the containers
Is the end of the ladder, and beyond it
Well, who knows. Nobody knows
Or maybe I’m not told. I’m not as yet one of them, you see, to be let into such information.

First I told myself: nonsense. And John, from 7th floor said the same:
Get out of here, what ladder? What holes?
Hey, buddy, I’m telling ya, there’s no ladder there! No hole, man! And I take my ******* out every evening.
There might be one in your head!
I touched myself: no hole! So, I started watching.
Today, tomorrow, until one evening when
I saw it.

It was…a huge hole! It swallowed me at once! And the ladder,
Was shiny and sturdy.
I ran to the kitchen, I took the sack with leftovers and started going down
Running.

The others, quicker than me, were ahead. And they were running as fast as their legs would take them, as if someone was after them.
And when they were touching the ladder, they would suddenly throw themselves head first! And the ones they were bracing themselves trying to hang on were pushed from behind.

So, slowly but surely, I started to slow down.
And, when I saw no one was watching, I started going backwards.
Then I started running.

I went to a halt in the middle of the sitting room and grabbed my head in my hands.
Somebody had moved the ladder by the foot of the table, the big one, covered in the
Last supper doily (maybe the guy upstairs, John, in a moment of adamic hate rage)

Years have passed since. Questions, frictions, showers, pills…anyway, nonsense.
I’m now cured by that thing with the ladder. Oy, mate, I say, there’s no ladder there!
In my house only the wooden floor’s shining! You can shave in it mate! You can shave in it!
Look at it! It came all the way from Germany, they know their stuff, Germans!