Speaks with the Dead Poem by Steffen Popp

Too few resources to think of all that occurs
vegetal fate, i.e.: Decomposed in the Clay Pot.
Bored by our styles the intensive disgorges us
into the light, humus for spirit, microbes.

Other than memory, suggests the child, what is not
actually in space, undisgorged in time
on this day it learns the words nougat
Honduras, lymph nodes, Little Longnose.

It learns the word babel and doesn't forget it
only its sense, it learns the word ball-peen,
the word ballpoint, the word balloonist.

Signifikant: i.e. the fate of the hamster,
of spiders. Here the child utters only -kant:
lays out articulate graves, speaks with the dead.

Translated by Christian Hawkey