Spider

A puppet theater composed entirely of spiders. It’s Macbeth, performed by the fat boy of the class. He has dressed all in black and can hardly be seen behind his theater box in the darkened classroom. The rods from which the spiders are hung, and the many threads that steer their movements, he controls with fabulous precision, a cool passion, and he does all the lines himself in different voices. The witches are played by three fat garden spiders. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” they cackle, but none of the children pay attention. The boys are shouting, and the girls are screaming hysterically. Nor does the teacher see the beauty in the performance. In all the turmoil her only concern is finding the switch for the lights.




Lion

At the circus we see an unusually skillful lion tamer. Classically dressed in striped strong-man tights, completely bald and with a handlebar moustache. He holds a watering can in his hand. Cautiously, oh so cautiously, he pours water in the ears of a lion. A deaf lion is quite harmless. With no danger he can call it names: “Kayak upholstery, rocking chair-ballast, potato testicle!” Most dangerous is if the lion has to sneeze. The trick is to pinch it by the nose until the water fills up its eyes.




Albatross

Just as the taxidermist lifts the majestic wings of the albatross to remove more of the giblets, the room grows dark. Without my seeing it, a sleeping potion is poured into my glass. I dream that we sleep in fields of feathers. Scissors thunder across the sky, but we know it’s our task to draw the feathers from the ground by their shafts. Not until we are finished are we permitted to kiss. But, as they say, love overcomes all things. So on a naked globe we stand, all alone in the world, two children with closed eyes, lips pursed for a kiss.




Shadow

The contours are absorbed in different intensities of light and in the indistinct regions between light and darkness everything is clear: wax candles flicker in a changing wind. The women store their dresses away. Somebody is sneaking down the stairs in stockinged feet. In the foreground you see a boy who stares at a sun draped with heavy velvet hangings in the thousand known nuances of gray. The clouds hang far away as frail bells.




Sleep

While you sleep, the conscious world is cut out of the universe with crooked scissors. Then you see like an animal again, remember with the body: the shadows that rock the children in their long, thin arms; a stretch of highway that’s deserted. If the sleep is deep enough, the soul sneaks into the bedroom and lies down a few hours beside your body. Like a betrayed woman who cautiously puts her arms around her sleeping lover.




Autumn

In October you have more blood in your eyes, see more clearly and do not need to dream about the water, the cold sea and the evenings, where the moon washes ashore like a mine made of brass. The overcoat is already whispering of better days to come: the insoluble equations of the storms and the leathery trees in the parks. The tongues of strangers and the new color of the sand. All the angels will stay tucked in their coffins, their mouths stuffed with leaves.