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Samstag, 25. Mai 2013


If you wear your wounds
Like an old dress
Too short
Too tight
Cutting into your arms

Know that dress is not you
It was meant to be discarded
At the moment you outgrew it

Don’t cling to that dress
Just because you think
You have nothing else to wear

Or because you’ve come to mistake that dress
For your own skin
Tight and raw
Prickling at a child’s reproachful look
Or a spouse’s off-key remark

Your vocation is not pain-master
Holding yourself together with safety pins
You have bigger, grander things to do
Than jab yourself with needles dulled with use
As you mend and mend again 
The same split seams

Let that dress fall
Or wriggle out of it
Or cut yourself free with the same blade
You’ve applied to yourself all these years

Feel the real pain of this moment
The beautiful, throbbing ache of your true longing
Free from the ghosts that whisper “boo”
Just when you’re about to risk 
An intimate moment with creation

Undefend yourself
Celebrate the kiss of life against your bare skin
Weep with relief
As you feel the depth of your desire
To say Yes
To sway in time with creation

(Howard Jacobson)


Weisst du, wo der Himmel ist 
aussen oder innen 
eine Handbreit rechts und links 
du bist mitten drinnen.

Weißt du, wo der Himmel ist 
nicht so tief verborgen 
einen Sprung aus dir heraus 
aus dem Haus der Sorgen.

Weißt du, wo der Himmel ist 
nicht so hoch da oben 
sag doch ja zu dir und mir 
du bist aufgehoben.

(Wilhelm Wilms)

The best people 
possess a feeling for beauty, 
the courage to take risks, 
the discipline to tell the truth, 
the capacity for sacrifice. 

Ironically, their virtues 
make them vulnerable; 
they are often wounded, 
sometimes destroyed. 

(Ernest Hemingway)