The lung
A lung lies on an islet
or rather on a tussock
in the smallish lake
and all around is forest
that is never-ending.
It seems to be still breathing
It says: look, I’m alive!
It has been removed from something that was
larger
from anything that existed in the sphere
of either animals or humans.
The birds here fly low and obliquely
they glide towards the surface of the water
but finally shy away.
No, no end is there to the forests
and the towns spread out like fish roe
in all that resembles congealed water.
The railway tracks unfurl their meanders
as if life was nothing else
than constant farewells and returns.
To be part of this travelling
which is an inward journey
and the lung that still lies there
in the small lake
and is scarcely visibly breathing.
As evening draws near it shimmers like opal
little remains of its light shade of pink.
It could be from a human being
that left its body
before dissection took place.
But it is more likely
that it derives from some everyday poaching
now before winter
now before the thin and hazardous ice.
*
As night falls the signposts disappear
only the lung indicates the way.
Older than any legend
although just recently excised
it tells you who you are,
and your embarrassment subsides
when you have listened long enough
And your face (that which you regarded as yours)
becomes increasingly erased in the twilight.
And
when it
says about itself: I was once two
the one half was taken away or eaten up
and actually died after a long loss of blood
I was borne by strong bird’s claws
to this lake
the death took place elsewhere
even so I say: look, I’m alive.
Give me a hand,
one chopped off or a live one
so that I have something to hold onto
when from this place I now
descend towards what lies deeper.
*
The nights and the value they can have
To say one thing and mean something else.
Which
is the harder and more desirable art
that of telling the truth or of lying
Which is it harder to retain
to die for and to live for.
If what the lung now says
that it was borne here by claws
then one’s conception of an act committed
on the spot becomes invalid
and the forest becomes even deeper.
And if it furthermore says
that it is alive
although it is not.
While what is waterlogged
continues to rise through the layers of clay
and while far off
cargo vessels and small yachts run aground
in sudden storms on other coasts
and while
the birds in here continue to fly
obliquely over the fen
because their eyes sense
as yet undiscovered traps
the lung starts to lose
its increasingly opal-tinted membrane.
It descends
emptied of blood.
But what one believed
was its illness
was instead a bath on the bed of the lake
and what one believed was a lie
crawled like a white slug
ever closer to the truth.
– But it was some other truth
some other attitude
that was thus revealed.
And yet it talked about a life.
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