Purzmalunder Poem by Arno Holz

At
the age of five
I was... certain about
everything.

In
China
French was
spoken,
in
Africa
there was a bird, called a kangaroo,
and
the Virgin Mary
was
Catholic and had a
skyblue
robe on.

She was made of wax and was the dear
Lord's mother.

When I grew up,
I wanted
to become
Schiller and Goethe
and
live
in Berlin behind the palace.

When I had children,
I wanted
to have them all
painted.

That
wouldn't be so expensive,
and
they wouldn't tear
their
pants.

At
Pollakowski's book bindery
hung a
large colorful
flyspeckbespeckled
poster
with a white stallion, rearing on his hind legs.

The fat Turk with the shining saber on the post
was
Ali Pascha.

If I ever
got a dime,
I wanted
to buy... it for myself.

But
mostly
I did so want... to discover
the source of the Nile.
I
knew exactly
how
you would do it.

Where
it flowed out,
you simply go into a
boat,
paddled, piddled and puddled
to where
everything stops.

Then you were there.

There,
there were apes,
throwing oranges and coconuts at each other,
gold dust,
and
grape-raisin trees with bushels of almonds
on them.

And
so I wouldn't starve,
I would
take
lots of barley-sugar bars along and a mess of carob bread.

But
I wouldn't tell
anyone.

That
I kept for myself
alone.

Only
I wondered
to myself,
why the others were
all
so dumb!