Michael Speier

Michael Speier Poems

and, wild-swans the morning
at bewley's flurries
yet tea in our words
yet light in the bag
...

WHY EXACTLY ONE SLEEPS we would like to know
why exactly is data ever more often stowed away in clouds
& we in the wadded vacuum of an airport waiting room
why exactly berlin on the horizon just now
...

just thee to compare
to this summer day—
at whose end we stand
and look out to the sea
...

the century of clouds, are you sure?
their surfaces as enigmatic
as their tactical ploys against centrifugal forces
unhurried shift of time and potential
...

found ourselves on the back of the whale
later unquiet the mastiff's
tail strikes the kitchen table
...

fine brushwork: january morning with drizzle,
one's shoes aquariums, pupil-dilations, cycling ladies
blossom (do vermeer's girls look like this?), a yellow
in the 17th century's debt, specific hue of green
...

maybe the wind maybe nothing at all
in the deep wicker chairs
of this star
we've now arrived
...

Michael Speier Biography

A member of the PEN Club, Michael Speier is a poet, translator, and literary scholar living in Berlin. He taught as Visiting Professor at a variety of institutions in USA and Germany: Dartmouth College, Georgetown University, the Free University of Berlin, Leipzig University, the University of Cincinnati, and Middlebury College. In addition to having published a number of anthologies and translated modern English, French, and Italian poetry, he is the founding editor of Park. Zeitschrift für neue Literatur and the Paul-Celan-Jahrbuch. His own lyric poetry has appeared in nine volumes and over 50 anthologies and has been translated into 12 languages. In 2007 he received the Schiller Award, in 2011 he has been awarded the A und A Kulturstiftung Literaturpreis.)

The Best Poem Of Michael Speier

Dame street, dublin

and, wild-swans the morning
at bewley's flurries
yet tea in our words
yet light in the bag
l'île joyeuse not
asunderjoined yet
intertwined

wishes, press the sleep key
mornings at bewley's
of celtic twilight
don't the waiters
crunch yeats into our feathers
ears full of wind
and question particles

but language
mornings at bewley's
it wanted it knew
it took me I'll put
your stick in my mouth *
didn't keep me back as far as you
craned your neck

*original in English

Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

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