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

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN 10 MARCH2015 I climb the stairs of the metro Plaza Egaña. I like to go, looking straight at the sky. The floor dissolves the space.

The sixth edition of the international poetry festival Mihai Eminescu in Craiova, Romania, 17-21 September 2018

MIRROR The evening sky is helplessly hanging, a full-length mirror to the ground; Beyond the clouds, a faint, hardly visible star— Now seen, now lost, my image. ***