By Benny Andersen
My suitcase opens wide imploring
Feed me
fill me with socks
stuff me with shirts and underwear
fatten me with folded things
load me with longings and a shaving kit
I beg you
give me one more chance
to be tumbled around in trunks
relegated to backseats
treated like a dog on conveyor belts
let me be emptied
put through customs
and refilled
with dirty socks
half-emptied bottles
abducted ashtrays
let my contents spill out onto foreign sheets
hang on interesting hangers
plop in bidets with a guttural accent.
But most of all
Forget me someplace
in an out-of-the-way synagogue
in a jungle or an opium den
on the top of Kilimanjaro
on the bottom of the big city
in the corner of a desert
or dropped off of a dogsled
under the northern lights
under the southern cross
underway
it doesn’t matter where
just not here
where you know what you’ve got
where you know nothing will ever happen to you
take me with you
save me
let me never return
to this suffocating security
By Benny Andersen ©1985 “Rastløshed”
Translated by Michael Goldman