PATHS IN THE DARKNESS FLY FROM SLEEP Poem by Ulrike Draesner

heard them calling on the exact
same day in the mandarin-coloured
sky over berlin i blind they
calling i saw at one in the
morning others too at windows
lintels falling couples loud against
the sky that had draped itself
over the town hung in its
manky glowing jar
the ghosts of the geese

please, take this image
of their whirring wings inside
the columns of rome or under the
boughs of a dream
we in these parks on mountains
that were bunkers become
memorials are swimming in drugs
condoms and beer under skies
that have swallowed every star
take
wherever we fall
as we fare forth
rise up:
alone in winter

paths in the darkness
fly from sleep and later we would like
to ask the ice if it can still remember
what it was like as water as a star as
stone as me . . .
as it fell
and dreamed of geese calling
near a patch of city-dinted eye-tinted
sky over berlin in mid-october
we craned our necks, the sky
was a blotch, the underside
of a beak

intangibly raucous
stretched towards us
hissing