Asked what it is

The huge scar-pocked palm leaf outside the papeterie in Papeete. The bikini billboard at the bus station of a busy mining town in Bohemia. That moment’s hesitation in the photo studio: how did I come to appear in this light? The philologist’s pink index card, his commentary on a line from the Iliad. Letters that the lazy postman left behind in a sack labeled “Destination: The Azores.” Now it’s turned out different after all, so different from what we imagined in our evening courses. No idea who it is will one day give the speech to summon up an army of heroes. Fighting machines were the latest hit when our children’s children still went to the movies. What now? How should I pass my days, with the world exposition long since over? Discovered by divers, far from the coast, a yellow pianola at the bottom of the sea. The calm of images thick with dreams in the banana republic of the real. Translated from the German