hiding poem — Heissenbuttel

sintering texts together over years until they seem impenetrable a laborious business
sintering texts together until they are bottomless a business to no one’s benefit to no one’s harm
against this stringing together of sentences and words
I recover by simply writing down what comes to mind
the thin blanket of texts on which I live
the thin blanket of texts on which I am mistaken
I live on texts
in the middle of the night Rudolf Augstein, dressed in a white linen suit, wakes me up and declares that from now on he will publish all my poems
cross-dreaming
speaking carefully as a matter of principle as a maxim
the lower level of speech
mental walks elsewhere while I am physically here
it is to be assumed that the mental image I have of myself differs in decisive ways from the image others have of me
forms of community that have been imposed on the generation I belong to disgruntled thoughts about the sexual habits of man
my unit of time is the playing time of a LP side
anyone clever enough to invent a philosophy would also be clever enough to hide behind it
I hide behind the wording of the sentences I write down
Growth in knowledge cannot be predicted
retrospective
repressive
disreputable
disrespectful
invented prehistory
chopping off
harmless
irreversible
aberration
the hole in the wall that never grows back

(Heissenbuttel — Versteckgedicht — Textbuch 8 (p59–60) translated by MachineTranslation)