On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty

European

what is a continent – a rough piece of earth, divided by

seas and tectonic plates, where mountains and lakes, rivers form borders

and I was born there, like so many before me and so many after

I never saw the primeval forest, or the wild animals

but I have seen the people, and heard their accents and voices, how they

took turf, clay and marshes to build cities from hard soil

and where they formed countries – after all, differences had to be

defined: here a language shelters in a thousand mouths

here is the music and the customs, here is what makes us distinct

it’s not that we don’t breathe through the same lungs, don’t have hands

don’t have feet, arms, legs that carry us

that we ramble through sun-given days, watch through the night

it’s not that we aren’t born on the same earth, but that we built

walls, marked borders, claimed and named

I never saw the primeval forest, or the wild animals

but I have travelled: I saw the inextinguishable light, the frozen north

neatly arranged my words in Alexander Platz, let them

dance through the Alps, met Kafka in Golden Lane, swam

in the Vltava and the Danube, melted sentences down the Leaning Tower

ate Sachertorte in Viennese coffee houses and in a burst of

recklessness I freed the Sagrada Familia from its scaffolding,

swept age-old dust from ruins and made the Acropolis

rise again, flew over Romanian fortresses, English palaces

and in each country I found something different, but always the same:

from Sofia all the way to Maastricht, from the Baltic to the Aegean,

I gathered stories from people who would not submit to borders

and together we made a treaty, so that from here on out we may all

be welcomed by the same name: we are European