[It's not me, ...] Poem by Johannes Jansen

It is not me, but the machine in me in the course of becoming, against which I am defending myself with submissiveness. It is struggling with the nature that makes me what I am. Outbreaks of sweating, the shaking of the hands at the start of new acquaintance. I do not know whether I would be able to save myself. The substance that the struggle is depriving me of, that could be saved. That small, crystalline structure, for instance, that is juggling with content.



Translated by Catherine Hales