There were also poems.

Then came a man –

everyone else vanished

when the man came,

and the fear vanished too.

Next came a child,

and the fear returned,

the fear of sudden death.

The wave of lullaby suffocated me.

The smell of milk deafened me.

All sounds vanished, except mine,

which rang from inside

like soft metal, like

the swallowed tongue of a bell.

All sounds vanished –

the jealous, the warm, the coarse,

the sweet and yearned-for,

the strict and simple.

Then anorexia – lov e

between bones and skin,

and a third party: the poems,

those grieving mourners

who could not get used to each other,

to me or the dead.

One by one they said goodbye.

And when a child,

between morning milk

and afternoon porridge

makes sounds, syllables,

and rhymes them

and builds up words

like colourful plastic blocks,

I understand, I know exactly

what you’re trying to say

and what you mean:

you – my mother’s mother tongue

you my mother’s mother tongue

you – my mother.