Ich lese im englischen Original in Leslie Feinbergs „Stone Butch Blues“. Eine deutsche Übersetzung gibt es bei Amazon. „Träume in den erwachenden Morgen“ haben sie es im Deutschen Untertitel genannt. Die Bestellung ist raus. Ich bin gespannt, ob es sich in Deutsch auch auch so gut liest und ich „eintauchen“ kann in die Geschichte dieses Menschen. Ich fühle mich berührt und aufgehoben. Während ich den Text Wort für Wort abgeschrieben habe, habe ich Lynyrd Skynyrds „Free Bird“ gehört. So langsam klären sich meine Gedanken und Gefühle – ich beginne, sie ganz behutsam in mein Leben zu integrieren, in mich, in meinen Körper, in meiner Kleidung. Wenn ich Leslies Worte lese, kommt es mir so vor, als sei es nur ein kleiner Schritt in eine – zugegebener maßen grausame – Freiheit.

„One day my high school English teacher, Mrs. Noble, gave us a homework assignment: bring in eight lines of your favorite poem and read them in front of the class. Some of the kids moaned and groaned that they didn´t have a favorite poem and it sounded „borring.“ But i panicked. If i read a poem I loved, it would leave me vulnerable and exposed. And yet, to read eight lines I didn´t care about felt like self-betrayal.

When it was my turn to read the next day, brought my math book with me up to the front of the room. At the beginning of the semester I´d made a cover for the textbook out of a brawn grocery bag and copied a poem by Poe across the inside flap.

I cleared my throat and looked at Mrs. Noble. She smiled and nodded at me. I read the first eight lines:

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were – I have not seen
As others saw – I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone.

I tried to read the words in a flat sing-son tone without feeling, so none of the kids would understand what his poem meant to me, but their eyes were already glazed with boredom. I dropped my gaze and walked back to my seat. Mrs. Noble squeezed my arm as I passed, and when I looked up i saw she had tears in her eyes. The way she looked at me made me want to cry, too. It was as though she could really see me, and there was no criticism of me in her eyes.“ (p.37)

Das Gedicht von Poe mit dem Titel ALONE geht übrigens weiter:

„Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.“