I am a double-voiced song bird with a human face Poem by Ulrike Almut Sandig

I say everything twice,
do everything twice. I repeat

everything: every mistake
and every betrayal, always twice: TEST!

TEST! I am a double-voiced song bird
with a human face

and it's hard to see I'm an odd bird at all,
when I sit in the fern tree

and double-clink, double-
click and creak

and grind with my beak. I am
a travel company luring
you South, as if happiness
really is buried below the equator

but don't be deceived! I can't
be trusted, or if I can then

only twice. there's no helping
you, not even once.

I'm a little two-legged teapot
wearing my father's

black cassock, his white collar
and I carry with me

my mother's girlhood dreams.
when I leave you, it'salways twice:

once in the South, but just as a test
and once STOP! in the Northwest.