Revolution

Your friends who made revolution
– and in the distance you see another one approaching who could become your friend –
live in houses that are too big for them,
and faraway they have more houses,
where they haven’t been for a long time,
so you shouldn’t think you can say something about houses
instead of something about growing old. What is it like if you think
that only a revolution will help?

For instance, one who lives in the most beautiful house in Paris
and you can go there for dinner one night
and it’s none of your business what is said to a stranger
who rings the doorbell and stands at the front door
or at most you ask: surely you have someone to open the door?
(just to open the door?),
but your voice stays calm,
you don’t even need to do your best for that anymore. Is there something you want to talk about
as if the listener
does not know what it is like? The wings of an angel
are not for flying (even if there are some who use them for that),
but for whispering over great distances
with their shape, as can be seen from faraway, and their colours.

You spent many nights one after the other
in a house that belonged to a friend of a friend’s
or an angel’s angel,
who cries out as if he wants to call someone back
to calm him down
as it gets dark. When you were back in your own house
he came to you to say goodbye in your house
to whoever wanted to say goodbye to him,
and it was only the next morning that you saw that he had only wanted
to stay one night, but why then did he have
so much luggage with him? Can you see anything from your house,
the ocean? A park with oars standing upright,
a fish with its mouth
full of hooks,
just look how many wanted to have me. What remains of you
when every fish or angel has travelled a day
away from you. You move your nights
forward, then
backwards.

Is it going to start again with fury
about the redistribution, and only afterwards
about the distribution? You want an uprising on the streets? That works better if the fans of the football clubs join in,
the Galatasaray and Fenerbahce supporters in Istanbul,
like once the Blues and the Greens
in the Hippodrome in Constantinople. You don’t think you will be able to
predict the outcome five minutes sooner by recognising that,
at most it provides an opportunity to be able to explain it
when you’ve stopped watching.

Your friends who are suddenly poor
after they have given you
what you asked for,
no longer able to live in their big houses,
but in houses as small as when they were children. What is an uprising that’s not a revolution? Heaven is where the angels are
or what the angels rebel against
when they get scared that it can only postpone its downfall,
not prevent it. If an angel gets old
he becomes just like you (as in: surrender those wings),
but for a long time he looks much younger than he is,
as in: have you ever thought
of becoming a model,
you are too old
for walking back and forth where everyone can see you, but your face could hang above the bottles of perfume
in shops at airports, three times life-sized. Because I look
like I no longer have any wings?