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you sad
Holy Father
my dear father
    Â 
    you should rebel
interrupt your sleep
head for Rome
for Sotto il Monte
    Â 
    sleep dream God
and faith alone
stand in Wrocław
a horror in stone
    Â 
    but in my heart
you have
the most lovely monument in the world

I recite for you
poems by Norwid
(according to Michelangelo
Buonarroti)
    Â 
    It’s sweet to sleep, but sweeter still to be of stone
In days that shame and calumny have made their own
    Â 
    you smile
    Â 
    you see John you’re neglected
because your monument is “wrong”
it was put up by some suspect
organization like Pax or
Caritas with a party affiliation
such were the dark wheelings and dealings
in our country
in yesteryear
    Â 
    you remained yourself you lost none
of your good humor and with your stone
hand jutting from your stomach
as if from a stone cask
you bless me
Tadeusz Juda of Radomsko
of whom it’s said
he is an “atheist”
    Â 
    but my Good Pope
what sort of atheist am I

they keep asking me
what I think about God
and I answer
what matters isn’t what I think about God
but what God thinks about me

    Â 
    Â 
    . . .
    Â 
    Â 
    Master Jakob Böhme
(not my master)
    Â 
    so then
a Silesian shoemaker
by the name of Jakob Böhme
“philosophus teutonicus”
as he was called
    Â 
    who lived by the bridge
in Görlitz
    Â 
    told me how
he saw the gleam of the divine light
in a tin pitcher
or maybe a beer mug
    Â 
    I walked from Zgorzelec to Görlitz
to buy shoes or maybe brandy
armies of ants were marching
over the bridge carrying
Garden Gnomes Gartenzwerge
wicker baskets strong liquor
    Â 
    I’ve forgotten the details
of the story told by that modest man
and capable artisan

who saw in his kitchen
in some container
the gleam of the absolute
    Â 
    see you descendants in what
modest form God appeared
to the shoemaker of Zgorzelec
    Â 
    (though he was a good shoemaker)

conversation with Herr Scardanelli
    (an apocryphal story)
    Â 
    Â 
    â€œsehen Sie gnädiger Herr kein Komma”
    Â 
    sehen Sie gnädiger Herr Scardanelli
kein Komma kein Punkt
Doppelpunkt Strichpunkt Gedanken-Strich
and just between ourselves
you were no ordinary madman
you were sometimes the mad Eure Excellenz
sometimes you pretended to be Greek
Leb wohl, Hyperion . . .
Gute Nacht, Diotima . . .
    Â 
    Diotima you dreamed up
from a white glacier
she did not sweat did not eat
lacked that which every maid
and every woman possesses
hadn’t a drop of blood in her body
she was a copy of a Greek sculpture
her colors had faded
she was a death mask
poor
poor Scardanelli
the Nazis exploited you
but in Mein Kampf
there’s not a word about you

Hitler adored Wagner
was himself a character from Kotzebue
    Â 
    Pity you never read
Heidegger’s comments
on your poetry
they’re brilliant
the professor was a scribbler
wrote indifferent poems
to his Jewish lover
the “lump in pumps”
–as Thomas Bernhard called him–
wanted to be führer to the Führer
    Â 
    I last saw you in Valhalla
near Regensburg
though I didn’t see Heine there
    Â 
    you were a thoroughly German
genius and that was why you went mad
later you played the madman
and wrote extraordinary poems from the Tower
Eure Heiligkeit
when you were asked about Goethe
you shrugged
when you were asked about poetry
you shrugged
or you said: “Sehen Sie gnädiger Herr
kein Komma”
    Â 
    [2002]

the poet’s other mystery
    the poet is 90
and he is 9
and 900
    Â 
    or he is 80
is 8
and is 800
    Â 
    make room for youth
I say to myself
I see
a cat
lying by the fence
its sharp teeth bared
to the sky
little flowers by the stream gazing
with their eyes agleam
    Â 
    the fragrant acacia
    Â 
    I mean I’m not going to start
waking people at night to tell them
that I had good intentions
    Â 
    and I oughtn’t to wake my wife
to tell her
I’m afraid of death

it’s time to die
but I somehow don’t want to
there’s