Nico Bleutge

Nico Bleutge Poems

grey plan a semicircle
below cupolas slanting weight
of an arch height
measuring out space for itself
...

above the line of the mole. single points, the water
glimmers up yellow when the sun whispers through the

clouds, the hand curves round to catch the light
on the iris. into the picture eyelashes hang
...

as though a layer existed between them
and the narrow strip of coastline
the clouds emerged, sharply cut
off at the lower edge, above
...

pebble dash the stretched wires
gave to the veranda precisely that dense

order which the gaze with its sharpness
seemed to undo. the severe lines
...

then the heat slowly eased itself
off the balcony and the eyes were more easily

diverted from the houses. the white
satellite dishes at the windows
...

cloudy sky. at the edge of the picture branches
lie stretched across the water, the long fingers

reaching far beyond and holding the ocean
at bay. Seen closer
...

the gaze marks out the field its roaming
takes its measure from the tongue which mono

syllabically lifts up sand and cross and tin and sign
by sign it scrapes together the names
...

the lines of telegraph wires above the skeleton's sandstone
the swelling clouds behind the hills
the pupils clicking into position. oblique exposure of the horizon
...

view frame: the dried oil
on the benches. beneath it the hard
cracked soil the ochre of the stalks the train
shunts slowly onto the rails, past houses
...

clear contours. the light
lay behind the boats, the harbour

held onto the half-light and the hills
...

you were ungrateful, said the voice
said not a sound and slowly pressed closer
fast to the body, the skin gone numb and cold,
the fist unloosed, the false teeth loosened,
...

then, toward noon, the first
sounds rise from the street. the slapping of hands
against cloth, children's chatter. on the grounds
between apartment blocks, calmer
...

still densely cross-hatched by light (as though overlaid
by a streetgrid) these roofs jutting up from the gardens,
corrugated, iron, nearly choked by climbing vines
...

Nico Bleutge Biography

Nico Bleutge was born in 1972 in Munich. From 1993 to 1998 he studied German literature, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Tübingen. Today he lives in Berlin. From 2001 he has worked as a freelance literary critic for, among other, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Zeitung. In 2001 he was awarded the open mike der literaturWERKstatt Berlin.)

The Best Poem Of Nico Bleutge

A cupola a section

grey plan a semicircle
below cupolas slanting weight
of an arch height
measuring out space for itself

the building holds iltself up covered
in colours: mild blue a red
hue small chamber-twig
subtly branched out until

ropes after a tender twist
several cross-sections between
the legs the measure
figures and directions hint at

a flow pressed by something tiny
through channels only a gripping whorl
now: some skin sewed
flush the hem an eye runs

along on its own

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock

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