Poetry in translation

Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert Too soon the night’s gobbled up the evening its light smothered wildly propelling winds and dark fingers of clouds to catch the hope of those fleeing on the rotting wood of the footbridge over the gorge

Nothing survived the Annunciation except rocks and the hard shadows of cypresses. Fright in her eyes, she smiles, trapped in the interior of a painting, her hands dirty before she is dragged away in the deathly air. What is beauty if not the roundness of her arms. Or the young Tobias, at war with the

1. Spring is born anew without memory of past lives and the experience of leaves and flowers. A drop of blood spilled on a white carnation petal may appear to signal a trace of Ariel’s random crime, but there are no other clues and no secret police in the flowers. Roots that dig deep into

  The old woman who ate cabbage everyday with roasted bread crumbs, a matron in the backyard —most finicky and industrious— makes bobbin-lace. The one next-door lost her daughter, little Eve, who drowned in the Sava. At night another neighbor chats to her man who is no more, by day she knits mittens for winter.

  At the carousel. Beside me a forlorn seal, sick of circus tricks. Creature of my right hemisphere. She puts her head in my lap. A carousel in the meadow. Seats buckled on ropes twirl round; Some empty. Those lifted by the upward force. Wooden surfaces of chairs bare. A rocket crackles. Someone fires a

  as in childhood I trust only the simple things water air light water always finds a way it circumvents every obstacle it widens every crack the invisible air lets itself be seen in the motion of branches and twigs in the spray of waves it uncovers roofs breaks down trees only the light has

  I. Out of one whole step twowholes. And each splinterson into other wholes.Nothing but circles, spheres,everything is a closed circuit. A waterdrop divides intotwo drops. And more. And more still.The drops become a rain.Dully pounding on thepane. It’s warm. It’s only me who is gasping out ofa dream, out of my seemingseparateness. I touchobjects