We have ordered musicians
but can we pay them?
Give them some tea

.....Listen, the trees are falling
.....Lovely, the sound of axes
.....cutting down the orchard

.....The times are changing
.....Play! I want to celebrate!
.....You can leave after that

I don't know, I want to go
Why have we grown so old?
I remember everybody

was happy, without knowing
why, didn't we discuss it
time after time! It is over

We'll die anyway
while life goes on
as if we have never lived

The elderly man

is between living and dead --


famously asleep.

Father, now waddling

from left to right, seems to walk --


on spherical feet.

In the hospital

lounge he takes a seat and falls --


asleep exhausted.

Splashing, dashing waves

in the shoaled harbour: a ship --


it is sailing past.

Out of fashion, out-dated
there's no help for it, so let me be
unattractive, rejected
because I show myself so conspicuously
and attract attention needlessly

That's how I'm seen. I am seen
and the whispering amuses me
although nobody talks to me

And you let me wait again
until the reception calls
that you are there

So I just sit here
looking out the window
I am used to it, there is nothing to see
at the back of the hotel
and it is getting dark

You always were impatient
My make-up took too long for you
and you sat angry in the car

but if I behaved exactly
the way you had conceived
you could really be sweet

It’s often I’d look unto the past,
a world of wonders not meant to last,
of joys forgotten, the die long cast,
of memories drifting and fleeing fast.

It's often I'd think of us,
moments of still quiet, mixed with triumphant fuss,
where peace would find me, where I'd be allowed to trust,
It's only then, when the hammer falls, that I'm struck by loss,

It's often that I think of dying,
that sleep may find me, without us goodbyeing,
the surplus of a lifetime, relatives crying.
But above all, that not enough time was spent trying.

her sun spots bragged of
summers spent reckless
and her silver locks of
once box dyed glory.
her drooping skin bragged of
first kisses and a hundred men’s touch—
from her so-called “glory days.”
her plump figure bragged of
children bore and
lovers loved and
a thousand lives lived.
in this old age I deemed her ageless—
having lived more in one lifetime
than most could dream to do in four.

The doctor wavers,

he sighs and looks through me, so --


I already know.

The old goat just stares

at me, I realise this --


is what is farewell.