Cowboycraft Poem by Monika Rinck

honest like the horse
between my knees
(Johnny Cash)


i am like a cowboy so sensitive, able to enter
the minds of the horses, the cattle, the edge
of the rocky mountains, i can from the distance
aim at the many birds and from their feathers
knot mosaics, which the founding fathers show
through all kinds of performances like forging, sweeping,
making fire, building churches, spawning children.
i can survive in the mountains and read the weather
from the moose, from the swan's throat
curved handle that through dryness is a rope,
through humid weather rolled up like a tail.
certainly sometimes there are these mountain nights,
where the knife drops from my hand, like something
that in this life I do no longer need
where, when the lukewarm fire heatless sours, my heart
shrinks to a bird muscle's size
then all animals around me are so different,
and also the moose is lifeless hard. then i am like a
cowboy so sensitive, a sensitive cowboy apparatus.


Translation: Donald Berger