OLD TYPEWRITER

Outside, the wind is straying, carrying around the prayers of the abandoned
into this dark night,
and I am sitting in cold, small room,
embraced by solitude.
And while the wind is stealing rays of light from the nearby church,
silvering the dark street,
I tend to solitude with my verses.
It cam be said that soltidue and me are like brothers,
we roam the world together,
and we sing together in the embrace of long dark nights.
There is a spreading rumor saying that the lonely poet has no friend
apart from solitude,
but there is still an old typewriter.
People might say: „How can a dead thing be a friend?“
You are mistaken, people. If the darkness would peek from your streets
into my poor, small, cold room, darkening the verses on white paper,
and if i would sing to myself
to cheer up solitude,
and I would curse the tears on this face so lonely,
my old typewriter would lead me away from the silence,
poverty and darkness of this world,
it would lead my lonely heart into higher and holier realms,
where angels
and souls of lovers sing from the most beautiful love songs.
I know, I have been straying too much and drinking cheap liquor,
and when I curse the world
I curse myself.
When I look into the bottle for comfort and the world's understanding,
all I am doing is removing the silky spider webs off memories;
when I am looking for a friend in the world,
all I get is loneliness.
I know that there are many signposts on the road of life,
but there is only one for me,
and it always displays a thumbs down sign.
It is dark, cold and ghastly silent,
all that can be heard is an empty bottle rolling across the old and worn wooden floor,
and the creaking voice of a homeless man in the street:
„Doomsday's-a-coming, world!...
Be silent!... You just go on and be silent!... Silence is betrayal!“
The homeless man's creaking voice reverberates down the street
like a bat in the fog,
and I am cowardly looking for salvation from within the bottle.
Yes, we are all running away from solitude,
like turning away from a bastard,
but the truth is that we are the creators of solitude,
just like wine,
and when a priest drinks from a golden chalice,
know that this is not the blood of Christ,
but wine, our sin.
And while the dark autumn night is lowering its veil onto the face of earth,
I am humbly looking at my old typewriter and thinking:
„Lord, now I know how the penitent man
feels next to the confessional“. It is dark and cold,
solitude, my dear solitude is now kneeling next to the old typewriter,
humbly waiting for death, as if standing next to the deathbed,
and I am removing silky spider webs from the heart of the old typewriter,
yes, friends, my old typewriter
is waiting for me to open my heart to it
before death arrives.