Clouds as Guarantors - Auf Wolkenbürgschaft

For Sabka

I am homesick for a land
where I have never been
where I will never go
where all the trees and flowers
know me
and where the clouds
remember me
meticulously
a foreigner who
has no home
in which
to cry her heart out.

I sail
to an island without a harbour.
As soon as we depart
I throw the keys in the sea.
I arrive nowhere.
My sail is like a cobweb in the wind
but it doesn’t rip.
And beyond the horizon
where the great birds
at the end of their flight
dry their wings in the sun
lies a continent
where they have to admit me
without passport
with only the clouds as guarantors.