Third Song
The day before peace our almighty
father major sent me and six others into the dead
silent night to the good
as defeated enemy
seven scouts on the border
of just about all: war peace life, walking
through mist into an ambush: i alone
was as if by a miracle saved
they were buried on the spot
among them my inseparable buddy
through four years of trenches
half a year later, meanwhile spring, i was studying
man in the city, drank ale, gorged
on steaks, ladies, came
his father, said: you
are still alive, you
were his buddy, you
know where he’s buried, so help me
dig him up, of course it’s forbidden, but he belongs
at home, in the garden
well, what do you do, i did it, i dug
him up with his father, read who he was
from his dogtag, he was falling
apart, a soft lukewarm mass, my hand
stuck wrist-deep in his body, shocked
at the stuff senselessly
making a hole real
after the funeral, illegally in his own soil, i
sat in their living room with mother sister father, drinking
a glass of tears, talking
around his boyhood portrait
i told: we walked stooping together, talked
muted of better and later, smoked
a belga together, smelled together
no danger / he was
a brave soldier, obedient
but not without self-respect, he loved
mozart wagner his country, listened
when his trees rustled / i did
little violence to his truth, kept silent
only all that unsayable the lice the whores and how
we went to town like butchers
oh, it was spring, in the garden
where we’d buried him that plane tree
was rustling, the tree that makes hands, something
was perfect, something
completed at last, even the moon
looked new, and his fleshly sister had
me on her lips, was in a tight-fitting body
at the end of april, the flowering currant
stunk of the earth, and my hand touched
her breasts, my hand
touched her breasts and it was
that same soft lukewarm mass, that same
soft lukewarm mass, that same stuff but
the same, and it was
this same hand, this