Michael Donhauser

Late perhaps one evening one
one evening late perhaps

A glass filled up with anis and
a voice that weeps
...

Through the night
we will, however
- eternal gesture -
lightly hoard
...

It was
it will
and is
and says
...

Rites of the evening glen
path and violence the eyes
burst open buds we said
look and the sky glowed
...

The fervent or seeing
the branches bend and
warmer still or breaking
heavy with fruit what
...

Take the maples
how they let slip
that they rustle
...

Did it rain
weren't those
raindrops
letters
...

There was - then the moon was only a sheen, the town,
the gathered clouds, nearby the naked branches of a bough,
bowing low … what was once was festive now bankrupt,
...

They say it was harsh, and so it remained, so lonely
that night in the room where, wholly forgotten,
a bunch of tulips were the sole revellers left -
unravelling themselves, ravelling on their stalks
...

O how the wind brushed through the gardens
so their leaf-dresses whispered when the quinces
covered with down bodied forth so ripe and full
while in the lindens nearby a silvered wind
...