AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED, FOR ME

How many hours have I slept?

The gray light

is the same as when I

stretched down on the sofa,

nothing has changed

beyond the windows,

same milky-gray clouds,

rain just ended

or waiting to begin anew.

It could have been an hour

or ten or fifteen,

this could be the late afternoon,

the evening or the morning -

this gray light excludes nothing

but the deepest night.

The clock on the wall

has long since stopped moving

its hands, pointing

at some moment that passed

unnoticed by me, like

all the ones that passed

while I slept. 

So I turn to the phone,

charging in the kitchen,

turn it on and return

to defined time,

to its ordered streaming movement,

looking at the numbers

on the screen: o6:31.

I have slept some sixteen hours.

And nothing has changed,

for me, while hundreds

have been murdered

in the conflicts of which I try

to shout when I am awake.

People whose names

I might know wait

to announce their deaths,

their last moments

bleeding on gravel or asphalt

or hospital floor,

while the indifferent world

sleeps on its sofa

the dreamless sleep of the one

who knows it won't awaken

trying to breath under rubble

after an explosion.

26.06.2025