God bless the Fundbüro

for Yuri 

God bless the Fundbüro, said Yuri 
who was named after Juri Gagarin, 
the cosmonaut who was the first man in space. 
Yuri with a Y had often – without knowing it – 
contributed a line or inspired a thought.

My mobile phone, 
an object I was so deeply attached to 
that I felt enslaved by it,
had reappeared.

Someone had taken it straight to the lost property office 
without selling it or keeping it for themselves. 

There are still honest people said my godmother,
and I thought of the tired woman behind the counter 
who handed me the phone wrapped in clear plastic 
and asked for my ID, 
even though she already had it in her hand.

Honestly delighted and undoubtedly relieved, 
I threw a coin into the pink porcelain piggy bank 
that stood to the right of the counter for this purpose.

Reference was made to the online auction
of unclaimed lost property. 
Surely it was tiring 
to catalogue and organise everything.

Colourful caps hung on small clothes pegs vertically around a stand. 
Behind the counter, rows of shelves full of abandoned treasures opened up.

I imagined God 
holding a blessing hand over all this 
the tired woman, 
the unadorned metal shelves 
and the manifold legacies 
of absent-minded passengers.

A soft light illuminated everything minimally 
and emphasised the shabbiness of the abandoned objects. 

Visual aids, walking aids, memory aids. Laptops, mobile phones, 
umbrellas, walking sticks, items of clothing... 
Above all, the collection of prosthetic limbs 
was reminiscent of a pilgrimage church 
where, among the votive tablets, 
crutches that were no longer needed found their place.

A few days earlier, I had sung in such a pilgrimage church—
under images of the Virgin Mary 
in various depictions of martyrs and saints. 
The kneeling Saint Anthony may have had something to do
with my phone finding its way back to me so quickly.

I thought about the lost property report. 
How wonderful that one could report a loss. 
I decided to assign serial numbers,
types and makes to my losses 
and describe them as accurately as possible.
Perhaps then I would find out 
whether I really wanted the lost items back.

Some of my dreams, 
which had become fallible realities, 
I would gladly put up for auction. 
Perhaps they could be useful to someone else.

I wanted to keep a few others 
and love them even more hopelessly
precisely because of their fallibility 
and inadequate realisation.

I thought again about God and whether 
he was really so interested in all this 
that he would give his blessing to it.

How did Yuri imagine this God 
or my godmother? -
As cosmonauts? 
As honest people? 

The old man with the bushy beard 
was surely preparing for the jobs in the run-up to Christmas. 

God bless our dreams. God bless our hopes 
and God bless our losses and delusions, I thought 
whoever you are.