Greater berlin, Poem by Lutz Seiler

a last colony smell & heavy
action at the chalets: some
hung sleigh-bells, late
returnees' overcoats, at the pockets
hard & frayed, we
still had silver foil, at times net curtains in
the cherry trees, bottles wherever one stepped, on
the short brown necks. there

we huddled around the table with
severe partings a few
pounds of eye whelps under the lids: rustic
fences, asbestos cement forever or
a he-won't-do-anything-pitbull in the pimpish
chaos & crystal-

clear bottles, first hard
to separate from the body but when empty
to be dug into the rat
holes, the whistling necks

against the western moon. how good
it was then the rat-swatting in a
northwesterly & whatever
we now have here: this

patrolling from the skull points, by day
when our musing carefully rests its
temples in the membranes of the air, raw
nerves on the tree-barks when

in the early light head
& life of a bird clash
with each other

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser & Gabriel Rosenstock