Instructions For Use of This Very Day

When in doubt, go to seaside places

- you will never go wrong -

and in the dunes remember 

how the surf rolled 

for epochs before the wheel

and will keep rolling

until under a giant sun

the seas evaporate

There is peace in the knowledge

that no law written by man

will be valid this long

And play guilelessly with small children

Look by the wayside for beetles 

Let them distract you

from the display

Let the shiny green beetles

run over your hands

until everything has been seen

For your path is just part

of your space-time

which leaves plenty 

that moves when you don’t

And love your parents more patiently than you hate them

Because in the end the most vulnerable seeds

of forgiveness will try to sprout up 

And understand you are rooted

somewhere, not anywhere

that your Mother Earth sowed you

that your Fatherland nurtured you

like your language, your older sister

Trustingly take her hand

and humor nobody

but her

And when the storm comes, go out to meet it

What good is anxious concealment

The plagues, wars and crises

will find you even under your bed

But instead they shall meet you

out in the open, as a free man

and only the cutting ice wind

shall be the reason for tears

on your burning cheeks

through which a pulse keeps throbbing

on this very day

---

This poem was first published in German as “Gebrauchsanweisung für 2023” in TWASBO Magazine, January 2023