Hendrik Rost

Hendrik Rost Poems

They give their boats the names
of unruly daughters who strain at the leash
to dance with the wind.
...

Back home late, I find you
asleep, a curved sight
beneath the sheets. The sky is clear
and so it's very cold tonight.
...

Out of fairytales we step with debts.
New ones, complicating lots of things.
Are they facts that tolerate no redress
...

Once when we drove around the longest days
far beyond the border to the north
and during those first days slept hardly
more than a few restless hours
...

I seek no evidence for emanations.
Don't stifle assumptions with notions.
Everyone has their favourite temptations,
...

6.

This has to do with the beauty
of staying at home on one's own for a few days:
Summer's approaching its deadlines,
...

Once, during the credits, when
a foul was repeated, only then
did I see between the players
...

The coastline disappears
in our wake, while
the visual horizon keeps
its distance. Water, I understand,
...

Hendrik Rost Biography

Hendrik Rost was born in 1969 in Burgsteinfurt, Westphalia. After a stint in the US he read German and philosophy in Kiel and Düsseldorf. His poems have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, such as Jahrbuch der Lyrik 2001/2002, neue deutsche literatur, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Schraffur der Welt. Junge Schriftsteller über das Schreiben and Sprache im technischen Zeitalter. He has been awarded the Düsseldorfer Lyrikpreis (1996), the Förderpreis für Literatur der Stadt Hamburg (1998), the Brentano-Preis of the City of Heidelberg (1999) and the Wolfgang-Weyrauch-Preis zum Literarischen März (2001). The Darmstädter Jury des Literarischen März praised the clear imagery of a “sober and cerebral poetry”, giving, “with formal economy”, expression to “everyday situations as well as scientific-philosophical matters”.)

The Best Poem Of Hendrik Rost

Berenice

They give their boats the names
of unruly daughters who strain at the leash
to dance with the wind.

A storm is gathering if one believes
what yesterday promised,
visibility was so good it got lost somewhere

like some interest never satisfied,
a fisherman bales water from the bilge
of the open hull in order not to have

to spend even a single day on land,
where holidaymakers wait to see what's to become of him.

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock

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