COURSE OF LIFE Poem by Menno Wigman

Of almost everything I've been ashamed.
My neck, my hair, my writing and my name,

the satchel from my mother that I'd don,
the blazer that my father would heave on,

the house where offered friendship was refused.
Now that my father though hangs from five tubes,

talks of goodbyes while heaving more for breath,
my shame now crouches out of sight. He died

the way he drove his Opel: quite composed,
correct, his eyes fixed firmly on the road.

No wish to wrestle senselessly with death.
How everything I still had left to say

beneath the wheels of time was blown away.