Ingredients of Sleeplessness Poem by Uwe Kolbe

It was the gnat, I heard it.
And it was - didn‘t the grass grow there
between two wars?
It was similar to the reason why I seriously left the city
for the first time.
And it was, that love rejected
to be as simple as a flick of the wrist,
beautiful like a word game,
funny and inexplicable, like the attacking
cat, which, after the attack, continues
to walk elegantly in moderate pace, or
to clean itself, licking the paw with the tongue,
then stroking the back of its head with the wet paw,
with this unimitable care.
It was, that the noise of my city
destroys the remains of the old plaster,
tips the last grey-brown
of the fire wall on to the monstrous lorry,
that nearly ran me over yesterday.
It was, that remnants of the former certainty
decomposed each other, the new one
remains private, the heavily pounding heart
- in our part of the world this is the result
of excessive consumption.
It was, you wake up and mumble,
will you close that window.



English version by Sapphire/Ramona Lofton