Michael´s House

Heute etwas ganz Besonderes: Im Sommer hatten die Stadt Ingolstadt und ich einen Gast aus Kircaldy, den Poeten und Filmemacher Ross Wilson. Von ihm stammt folgendes Gedicht, das ich Euch nicht vorenthalten möchte. Ich habe seine ausdrückliche Erlaubnis, es an dieser Stelle ins Netz zu stellen. Hier also das erste Mal ein Text, den ich nicht verfaßt habe:

MICHAEL’S HOUSE

for Michael von Benkel 

Could there be a greater contrast to death 

than Michael’s house? 

A gallery of a home adjacent to a graveyard, 

exhibiting his own paintings.

Even the furniture is a form 

of D.I.Y. installation art: 

a hammock-style chair swing,

designed and made by his own hand,

hangs from ropes in the garden, 

like a ripe fruit. A shattered mirror, 

re-assembled into a jigsaw picture, 

spider webs the corner of two walls. 

Jewel-like stones, wedged into his own 

pattern, form a bathroom floor 

like stepping stones his imagination 

can move at random upon 

about this place. 

Even the garage roof is a space 

to project a portrait made of chips

to the stars. Mandolins and guitars 

lean against walls, until 

our host makes fishing lines 

of strings to reel in songs, then

cooks and seasons them

in the home studio he made 

with the hands that stacked 

a thousand books like bricks 

supporting a lid of a roof 

on a pot bubbling over 

with all kinds of flavours. 

I was a guest there one summer:

Bavarian bier, Scots whisky, 

great food, fantastic company. 

The language barrier melted 

into the music of poetry: 

I Shall Be Released –

words fluttering from mouths 

like moths rising to the light 

shining over us as the wind 

stirred the graveyard trees 

and whispered of the storm 

Michael’s house 

would shelter us from. 

Ross Wilson

(Thanks for that!)