Property Poem by Volker Braun

I´m still here, though my country´s gone West.
PEACE TO THE PALACES AND DEVIL TAKE THE REST.
I gave it the elbow and heave-ho once myself.
Now it´s giving away its negligible charms itself.
Winter is followed by a summer of guzzling.
But I remain, worrying at the root of all evil.
And my poem becomes increasingly puzzling,
To wit: what I never had is being filched.
I shall always mourn what never happened to me in
person.
Hope lay across the path like a trap.
And that´s my junk you´ve got your paws on.
Will it ever again be given me
To say mine and thereby mean the collective me.

translated by Michael Hofmann