Radical change Poem by Mirko Bonné

With green hooves came trotting,
over the moraine's hunchback,
the weather. And the weather,
the other one, in the earth, called
to the weather, the first one:
It's spring!

The mountain men transform into
plantains. The stinging nettle bush
in the shade of the old garden centre,
no one will believe this, is
my father.

While in the newspapers
we still read of changes,
umbrellas take root
on the bus. Snow falls
in the cellars, and the weeds,
so they say, like the woodlice
demand justice.

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser & Gabriel Rosenstock