Decoration

What I remember best is the fog,

that always met me, suffocating,

grayish and never letting other

colors blend into the sight of the eye.

I also distinctly remember how

worn brown jackets, adorned in their

random bodies and logical hearts,

melted into the image of the great

void in decay and direct collapse.

The dingy sausage tavern and

the serving of burnt dreams

on cigar-painted overnight benches, and

the tuborg-green sound of raw absence.

The ticket office’s speaking tube of contact-secured

glass on both sides of the brain’s consciousness.

The night machine that lit the final paths

for a stranded Odense guest in a late hurricane.

The kiosk that teased with a light

meal of colored booklets and necessary smoke.

Yes, also the constant flow of despairing

housewives poring over noisy weeklies.

Outwardly proper suburban fathers slamming

their briefcases in holy outrage at the drunks,

junkies, and all the others who also never

caught the train before help was whistled away.

Thus the train station lay abandoned in my mind,

like a wound you know is bleeding despite the bandage.

Until today, when a magical plaster stuck

and stopped the stream of roaring pain.

The bike racks led me, as usual, along

the wall toward the clock and the busy doors of peeling wood.

My thoughts buried deep in the gray pavement but

with a sky above me as protector and friend.

A pull, for the thousandth time this decade at least,

and I am turned toward an entirely new era.

Oh, what a vivid explosion of sight in my stagnant eye,

what a symphony of human strings to my dead ear;

The train station as a grand symphony of blooming heartstones.

The green and orange benches like mystical tulips in the sun.

Smiling walls like red lips on a lilac-warm cheek.

Real flowers and people in different colors,

just as it has always been meant to be.

Fine central pillars like a well-placed pause in the midst

of all we must reach from station to station.

Try letting your gaze wander up the old trees, and

then see how a burning sky follows you on your way

into the restaurant with its life-giving soil and drink.

Perhaps your love lies in the receiver by the Easter-yellow box.

A gentle flow of nature-speaking people, clearly

affected by the enchanting journey through new landscapes.

A warm waterfall of gliding glances at one another

and the imminent stream of thoughts sent through time.

Even the lady in the sausage tavern draws her breath

as if it were home-grown honey and muscle-kneaded bread she sold.

I sat quietly in my intoxication of sight,

considered the kiosk but found the hunger weak.

I wanted to move on but was held

by the space and the human dreams of how

an entire city could be transformed into formations of life.