Marcel Beyer Poems

We are powdered characters
on easy chairs in the corner seating unit,
dimly lit, black velveteen.
...

Frog grease, in an exhausted state, scraped
out but for the edges and
brittle, still black, but only moderately so,
...

At certain hours my eyes grow
dark, then I race back into my
darkness before the first words
...

You sit and look around: secrets. The
objects, unspoken, for some years now
they haven't even turned towards the
...

Sedge stands over the land, stands
suspended, quite still. Sedge stands,
I hear nothing, in the light, you still
...

Sleep where I didn't sleep. So many hands on the
handle, at the basin and what was beneath it. Soon such weak
breathing, no sleep. What could have been, should
...

Now which do you mean, the seagulls, the boots
on the dock at night, the snow at night? Trieste
or Turku, Turku, Trieste - where are the flakes,
...

And what is dust, I sometimes want to ask you
when of an evening someone steps momentarily
onto the patio, beats the doormat
...

I see you draw soot, water, pores in the
plastic curtain, daylight, it smells of
quilt, of ancient green checks. I'm hanging
...

Fenland, evidence, descent and breakage.
Deeper incisions, but we talk, among
nests, over the veins, the leechings, the polish.
...