Botanic garden Poem by Jan Wagner

weighing up my words to you -
silent couples drifting to and fro,
beds of fallen leaves, the naked trees,
the blooms of fences blue as verdigris,
the light like wax, aristocratic, pale -
i saw the greenhouse on the hill,
glass, white ribs and fin de siècle,
and recalled those skeletons of whales,
how as a child i'd crane my neck to see them
hovering, it seemed, in the museum,
hung from ceilings on transparent threads,
monstrous beasts washed up by the tides
from depths unplumbed and times remote,
suffocated under their own weight.

Translated into English by Iain Galbraith