Dust Poem by Marcel Beyer

And what is dust, I sometimes want to ask you
when of an evening someone steps momentarily
onto the patio, beats the doormat
on the stone balustrade, with short arms
and with an overdrawn face (why, dust is

there, and dust surrounds us. I
can hear it, the plaster, the bristles scratching, and
down the road there barks

a dog), dust is not hair when a
dachshund is quiet again, dust is not
scurf of dead skin when someone wants to close
his shutters with his heel, is neither
dry leaves nor clay when none of it is recognizable
anymore. What is it, I ask you
sometimes, when I see the cloud of dust, the shadow,
across the clotheslines, the chimney and
then, still shadow, across the aerials.
Dust is in the blue, air, and my
question, dust into the sky, until it's dark.

Translation: Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock, 2004