ASTERIA Poem by Gerhard Falkner

The hand has been repaired. An arm is missing its shoulder
A knee drives suspended in itself. Everything is
impulse. Even the gaps work
A god comes onstage and, lo
the giants fall. Everything exudes the grace
of the hour. Goddesses grab heroes
by their hair and upend them like trees
from the earth. Immortality
has been repealed. The marble is in a state of alarm
The mother of Hecate, Leto's sister
lays the head of the next hero low
Everything surges, pelvis and garment
Of the sword, only the thrusting remains
the rest is missing, is interval, fragment
And yet how many gigabytes lie in this frieze, what
giant archive must be hiding in this stone if
even a non-existent blade
with a shimmer of immortality
can still reflect the gods' eternity

Übertragen von Mark Anderson