Most of the time we lived in mine

or appeared to
you had been here as long as I had,

arrived in my birth-year,
but had to wear it in

second skin
(your sixth, if we count

unspoken Classics)
though there was always

a tacit understanding
we could call on yours

and it erupted, comic hernia
in the shared gut of our daily

dealings, at times of great
frustration, bemusement or when

words failed you.
At uni the man who ran

the language lab said, facetious,
that’s how they catch spies

get them to count or say

times tables, you can always

trip up a mother tongue
coax it, shy animal, or

smoke it out, too brutal.
I pull on the tip and up

comes a whole scarf, colourful,
knotted to others and

not about to stop, a magical
evisceration but I want

all of you, things you have
names for that aren’t

seen here: Zwiebelturm, 
Trachten, Bergbahn –

or fragments, foods from
childhood, still stuck to their

labels and longed for
though irretrievable:

Hagebuttenmarmelade,
so that we cook up together

a Wähe, a Brei
because die Liebe geht durch

den Magen – goes through the stomach
like language, and last but not least

the cloud of names
buzzing about my head, like Pigpen’s

dust but unseen by others, 
unmerited, since I could not live up to them

and they sound now, so many
years later, nearly obscene

with lost intimacy:
Süsses, Schönes, Gutes,

Schatzi, Putzi, Liebes.