Johannes Jansen

Johannes Jansen Poems

Pausing on the threshold. Cold from inside the building, a church or a production facility on a public holiday. I've taken just random samples, then withdrawn back to the threshold. The looking and the waiting. Altars or machines. It's that unclear. The lighting subdued.
...

I'm walking along a street as though I were walking along a street with nothing more in my mind than thinking myself on this street. And yet it is a crossing of ways that's bothering me. This feeling of my own nakedness to everyone and above all to the depths of my own being,
...

It is not me, but the machine in me in the course of becoming, against which I am defending myself with submissiveness. It is struggling with the nature that makes me what I am. Outbreaks of sweating, the shaking of the hands at the start of new acquaintance.
...

That's how we ruined our minds with milestones of pointlessness. Savage mad minds that suspect Camorras everywhere and refuse to accept any reason.
...

Incapable of retreating, arrival precedes us. Do you want to arrive or just be on the way, the intractable situation asks, without avoiding a smile. The latter, we say, because we don't want to be finished before shifting time has fulfilled itself. Everything is possible. Nothing is possible.
...

Johannes Jansen Biography

Johannes Jansen (6. 1. 1966 in Berlin, GDR) grew up in Freiburg, Leipzig and Berlin-Pankow. He lives in Berlin as author and pedagogue. Jansen is one of the most remarkable voices of his generation. His very short prose texts have a somnambulant quality and are characterized by expressivity and onomatopoeic finesse. In his texts, reception and reflection constitute a non-detachably unity.)

The Best Poem Of Johannes Jansen

[Pausing on the threshold...]

Pausing on the threshold. Cold from inside the building, a church or a production facility on a public holiday. I've taken just random samples, then withdrawn back to the threshold. The looking and the waiting. Altars or machines. It's that unclear. The lighting subdued. The waiting for memories, free of any touch or reproach. The dream of taking useful action, aimed not at me but at something else that nonetheless seems, however, to explain me, in that I am serving its purpose.


Translated by Catherine Hales

Johannes Jansen Comments

Johannes Jansen Popularity

Johannes Jansen Popularity

Close
Error Success