I'm walking, with oilskin pulled deep over my furrowed brow Poem by Daniel Falb

(2)


i'm walking, with oilskin pulled deep over my furrowed brow, along the fulda.

the angle of the falling rain debases itself more and more; soon

it will completely miss earth.

i shake my head and put my hands on my hips. the longer

i think about history

the more a feeling rises in my bosom

that odradek be the earth,

a mantel of raging water over the entirely dried seed

of the peanut—bundled water.

crouching on the floor with wet clumps of cotton

my pottering hands revolve with the potter's wheel,

stuxnet,

stuxnet of the earth,

as if it had been accelerated to 1410 only to slow down shortly after to a few

hundred.

the larger the thing revolving, the more the outer limit recedes,

behind which twine and fresh

clay mix.

in the airlock recently removed slabs pile up, we go past two

half-filled garbage cans

which burn and turn, beside two peanuts

rotating on the fresh cement floor.

i enter the stone tomb, a lightweight tent on the floor. in my sleeping bag

the ermine sojourner truth lies awkwardly,

daughter of the pathfinder.

in the filament dust, which one finds on the floor of all spinning factories around the world,

in the text of the broken-off, old, knotted and

tangled bits of thread

of the most varied sorts

and colors, the ermine plays

and i share it with the animal, which remains

on the inside of its skin, by rocking it

in my arms.

Translation: Uljana Wolf