Tekst piosenki
Last spring
I spent a week in a convent in the Midwest
I’d been invited there to do a series of seminars on language
They’d gotten my name from a list in Washington
From a brochure that described my work as
„€œdeals with the spiritual issues of our time€”
Undoubtedly a blurb I had written myself
Because of this
And also because men were not allowed to enter the convert
They asked me to come out
The night I arrived, they had a party for me in a nearby town
In a downstairs lounge of a crystal lane’s bowling alley
The alley was reserved for the nuns
For their Tuesday night tournaments;
It was a pizza party
And the lounge was decorated to look like a cave:
Every surface was covered with that spray-on rock
That’s usually used for soundproofing
In this case
It had the opposite effect:
It amplified every sound
Now the nuns were in the middle of their annual tournament playoffs
And we could hear all the bowling balls
Rolling very slowly down the aisles above us
Making the rock blob stalactites tremble and resonate
Finally the pizza arrived
And the mother superior began to bless the food
Now this woman normally had a gruffed, low-pitched speaking voice
But as soon as she began to pray her voice rose
Became pure, bell-like, like a child’s
The prayer went on and on
Increasing in volume each time a sister got a strike
Rising in pitch „€œDear Father in Heaven”
The next day I was scheduled to begin this seminar on language
I’d been very struck by this prayer
And I wanted to talk about how women’s voices rise in pitch
When they’re asking for things
Especially from men
But it was odd
Every time I set a time for the seminar
There was some reason to postpone it:
The potatoes had to be dug out
Or a busload of old people would appear out of nowhere
And have to be shown around
So I never actually did the seminar
But I spent a lot of time there
Walking around the grounds
And looking at all the crops
Which were all labeled
And there was also a neatly laid-out cemetery
Hundreds of identical white crosses in rows
And there were labeled „€œMaria€”, „€œTeresa€”, „€œMaria Teresa€”, €”Teresa Maria€”
And the only sadder cemetery I saw
Was last summer in Switzerland
And I was dragged there by a Hermann Hesse fanatic
Who had never recovered from reading Sidartha
And one hot August morning when the sky was quiet
We made a pilgrimage to the cemetery;
We brought a lot of flowers and we finally found his grave
It was marked with a huge fur tree and a mammoth stone that said „€œHesse”
in huge Helvetica bold letters
It looked more like a marquee than a tombstone
And around the corner was this tiny stone for his wife, Nina
And on it was one word: „€œAuslander€” foreigner
And this made me so sad and so mad
That I was sorry I’d brought the flowers
Anyway, I decided to leave the flowers
Along with a mean note
And it read:
Even though you’re not my favorite writer
By a long shot
I leave these flowers
On your resting … spot
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