The plant is cersis silliquastrum, they call it the Judas tree.
Through the window I watch its brittle branches singing
with pink flowers. Are they singing for me or for the harsh
carpenter who had them in mind for the gallows of his son’s killer?
Every fragile branch reminds me of Zweig
who spent his sick days in one of these rooms,
while she shyly waived to him, like a girl raped
by Karadzic’s patriots, somewhere in the Bosnian cliffs.
The one who caressed your flower and drank your smell
must have had to drink barbiturant venoral in the pampas of Rio
with his darling whose name was Charlotte Altmann,
forced to move from under his tree forever. They donated their fragile bodies
to their beloved homeland aus freiem Willen
und mit klaren Sinnen to show their gratitude for exile.
Dear Jesus, send to hell all those
Who take revenge on the innocent for your holy suffering.
Today around the flowering tree sit homeless men
and careless students, carry Yesterday’s World in their backpacks
as heavy assigned reading for an obligatory exam.
They read it intensely, day and night, like painful homework
even that what was read would be soon forgotten,
the same way the time of flowers of evil and hate that grow will be forgotten
as the branches forget the winter and frost and pain
every new year when the new spring and the new blossom come.
Hibiscus bushes billow in a dusky backyard of the campus, above a bench
on which two young bodies let themselves be intoxicated by a symphony of eternal love, as in the past,
At that moment a tall, hunched man from the south passes by,
thinking about yesterday’s world,
about the spring that brings back memories of booze that heals the wounds.
The world is dying in a murmur and unified in the noise and the cries
in the distant homeland where the past takes part in an orgy again,
where people die.