She (English)
Einstuerzende Neubauten
Tabula Rasa (1993)

Late at night, early morning
NO LIGHT
only that from the ruins still glowing on the
raised ground at the back.

she:
false image not my features
chimera from a thousand years and one night
were not many consumed
strides down the heap of by her blinding sunwheel of power?
rubble: but I did get her ruins
safely over and done with

visibly exhausted, but not
injured:
even if she never fell
only those who fell for her

arrives at the bottom: I left her -
nearly loses her balance: not deluded

not a clue where to look
only hope-staring eyes

RED DAWN SKY ON THE EASTERN HORIZON
goes with conviction in this direction.
A tallish wall,
along it: resembling me this picture
in a traced outline
she was ideal and many had been
struck by her

Breach
HARD BACK LIGHT in the glow of her once incomparable figure
it did something to many
but then got right out of shape

she proceeds: I leave her - deluded

The wall decreases in size, eventually
disappears but continues underground.
(NO SUBTERRANEAN LIGHT)

MIDDAY

A black block bearing an idol modelled after
her, a weapon worked in as part of the neck;
beside it a control post next to a red-bordered
poster.
she stops and looks at it:
beneath the wild scratches of a pen
I seem to see my own face

IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRESS
she realizes this is an illusion.
The idol melts, the block crumbles into
countless little fragments.
she turns around and goes:

EVENING
I am leaving her - deluded
The Monday Ballet
my idealized profile
she, in the crowd, a scissor-cut silhouette in flag cloth
unrecognized: through the hole in a banner
the crowd seemingly
hope-staring at the sunrise
on the western horizon

I am leaving her - not deluded
SUNSET
It is not here what I unflaggingly seek
and it is not nowhere - then anywhere
NIGHT, ABSOLUTE DARKNESS

FIELD OF TOMBS

she fumbles her way through:
Various corpus delicti, strewn over the path as
stumbling blocks and snares, on the whole
completely unrecognizable - mutilated or
rapidly decaying.

PHANTASMAGORIAS WHICH RANDOMLY
FLARE UP:
(any similarity with her is accidental and
unintentional). Men badly disguised as women
with heavily painted lips beneath their beards.
Blue or green guerrilla combat eye shadow.
Some carrying rifles, following an old habit,
aiming up into the black sky, shooting colou-
red, stupid birds. Others smiling idiot-proof at
the flower in the barrel.
A couch
Orgon accumulators.
Joan Baez.
Wild and howling come-on-tators in sacrificial
lamb dessous en gros and in a pack.
Spirits of the orphaned ghosts of europe-
haunting spectres.
Universal know-all do-gooder ideas.
An answering machine for final requests as a
self-firing device.
Stool
And at last, for the last time, a hedge of bur-
ning bushes
- LIGHT FROM THE BURNING HEDGE -
chanting the old litany: IamthatIamthatIamthatIam...

walks past.

INCLINATION
I am leaving them - not deluded
After the hedge has completely burnt down
there only remains
GREY TWILIGHT
of uncertain origin, from somewhere from
back and beyond.

It is not here what I unflaggingly seek
descends the hill: it is not elsewhere - so nowhere -
where else?
THE LIGHT BECOMES STRONGER -
her silhouette gets smaller
and smalle, her contours can
now hardly be perceived: the blinding is increasing and so at last over
I have returned to the place where I've never
been before
exit she.)