Accompanied Alma Feldhandler’s exhibition Mantel Mann at Galerie Derouillon, Paris, 2023.

In London, when Winter settles in,
You can ice-skate
In the courtyard of the Somerset House.
I wonder if the water they freeze
Is the Thames’. Canaletto
Painted it a lot. I believe he
Mistakes it for the Grand Canal
In Venice, where he lived. It’s always like this,
Places recall others,
You’d swear they share the same lining,
It’s the same stitch. Just like
A coat sounds like a boat and
Maybe there’s a tailor named Altman
Or Horovitz in the stellar backroom of a shop
Who unconsciously cut everything up — names,
Clothes and the sense of History —
One heavy fabric-roll. There, the universe is
Tailor-made, the world is split into trousers,
Jackets with slits for buttons
On collars with notched lapels but
The mind sails on the surface
Like a big cloak of light
Golden or light blue or dark, it depends. The twist :
Figuring out what is yours.
That’s how
The prince and the doges get screwed.
They think they own what they pay for,
The palace and the print of the palace,
But in fact, they only pay to think
It belongs to them. Meanwhile,
Our clothes stay and wait for their men —
They’re not their men — in the cloakroom
Where everything was checked in
Momentarily. But here I am chatting away
And the background is fading, isn’t it?
Or the day has just
Fallen on us. Even I
Don’t know how long
I’m going to stay
Up. The state of vigil mixed with fatigue
Shakes
The ground.
The ground
Is strange
To me. There’s only what I wear
On me that is sharp.
How cold do you think it is
Outside ? How much is it
Like inside ? Are you doubtful
For what’s to come ? I’m not worried
As long as my clothes lift me up
In the air. Because the air is
In the coat. Right ? In den Mantel —
Was steht in den Mantel ? Die Luft.
Es steht die Luft in den Mantel and its tones
Change with the weather.
Now, the night is here —
No stars, no names —
And it suits us, I’m ok with it.
The forest line behind
Us is enough. We don’t
Need the circumstances anymore.
The night is green, it’s fashioned,
A tight knit of branches, patterns
Impossible to reproduce,
Behind the reddened alders
I always fail to count.
I suck the air
And when I’m out of breath from the walk
Of time, I lay down and sink into
The ground.
Sometimes my mental faculties collapse
And I cry because I’m sure of nothing, but I heal
And I have all the necessary strength
For another couple of hours.
But here we are in Santa Lucia
And we’re passing through the ghetto without
Knowing it, then on the bridge of the Barefoot.
Canaletto often painted it.
We’re producing heat under the clouds
Of midges at dusk,
We’re in luck,
What is no longer there is again very close to
Disappearing.