They dug up another bomb in Frankfurt today.
The flowing clouds never blinked nor paused
and neither do we.
We pack our bags like we’re heading off on an adventure,
not scared in the slightest,
but I back up my work just in case
and carry it with me in my pocket.
I wake up in a strange bed and listen for a bang.
I sit in the exam room with the Integrationskurs Teilnehmerinnen,
a private fly on a public wall.
It feels offensive to recognise the achievements of someone
who couldn’t read or write her native language this time last year,
but who nevertheless fills in her Geburtsort in a laborious foreign script.
Damascus. Kabul. Samarra.
Not caricatures or ciphers but women
in headscarves and jeans and heavy black dresses.
Who fill this room and
wait until the exam is over so they can pick up their children,
knowing they’ve jumped over one more hurdle
to their Niederlassungserlaubnis in a city
where all the bombs are already safely in the ground.
“Is this the last one?” we ask.
I make fun, but one day it will be
and we’ll never know.
There’ll be no parade, no public holiday,
no Peter Feldmann posed gamely by
the last ever one: Good work, everyone.
Will the earth become kinder?
Will the flowers bloom lighter-headed?
Will we have replaced them by then with something else?