How shall I climb
When the ladder
Is not mine?
How shall I reach
Thine ear
When such is not my speech?
How shall I engender
Words
When diction, close,
In other bosoms sleep?
I am a madhouse
Closed to the weeping
I am a tempest
Whose eye is not his
I am a whisper of a Man
I cannot know
I attempt faultless
Somersaults
In lands not my own
I am anxious
In the doing
I am unfree
In all I see
I mouth and bend
The golden quill of greatness
I mourn the pen
That has written
Both future and present lines
Marking all the neat bottles of ink
That will never be mine
Either to write with
Or to be
Dan Corjescu teaches at the University of Tübingen’s “Studium Professionale” Program
