Frog grease Poem by Marcel Beyer

Frog grease, in an exhausted state, scraped
out but for the edges and
brittle, still black, but only moderately so,

thus they polished, Bert, Berta, Leni, Martha,
Walter, even in their youth, their boots and shoes,
They shone them evenly, and exhausted

it sticks, it doesn't, but the skin is already
shiny, broken fibres, myself half ancestor,
half fringe-figure with black fingernails

and half a sentence on my lips, so utterly in the
wrong place, thus one rubs away all time, like
myself, across the mildly faded leather

the tone cracked, thus one just rubbed, and
just, moderately loud, the other half, thus one
always abandons the leather, the dyed leather, weak

and finally to where the skin covered
in grease disappears, I am
not there, I am stowed away in the box.

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock