they were born in the sign of Mercury,
the wing-footed, cynical god.
it was destiny – again.
they sold even your name
carved on the thin marble. They kept only the weeping angel,
sweet nanny!
they had to eat.
the dead with the dead and the living with the living.

(on the evening news I saw a girl
that suddenly grew old:
a medical oddity.)

from the crucified silvery Christ, with a tiny JNKJ banner above him,
(Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews – you told me)
I now feverishly counted - I used to do it just for fun,
while you were patiently
blanching your family graves:
12 pavers back, 3 rows of repositories.
You weren't.
And I kept my promise, nanny: always polite,
always a clean napkin in my pocket,
always nicely arranging
one on top of the other,
all my failures,
like shirts in a careless husband's wardrobe!

That's why
I stood there, with a cold candle in my palm,
my body coated by the smell of freshly baked bread,
ethereally roofing
the abandoned railway station and
the neighboring cemetery.

I stood there
all emptied
like a Buddha,
without the smile.