In the gated community we can't see the beyond,
And the walls are blinders to where others live.
But every place has a flower girl
Who died of cancer,
A young mother parading her baby,
A man with wandering eyes,
An addict who wants to be held.

Like a blood-red ribbon humanity trails down each street
And the good neighbor might be a brother,
Your son, the stranger who lives in the house.
What's out there is in us,
And if we jump the barricade,
The grass on the other side might really be greener.
Put on your traveling shoes,
You might even find true love in a faraway land.

 

For forty years a writer
And I still dreamed in German,
Kissed in German,
And poems germinated only in my native tongue.

Until one day
Out of the Anglo imagination
A fresh shoot burrowed up to the light,
Bursting into flower as an English poem,
Thriving under an alien sun.

Rooted in the tradition of my childhood
Each poem now takes nourishment from the present
And imperceptibly, I, the stranger
Have become a born-again daughter,
Sprouting new leaves in my adopted land.