[Lightly] Poem by Anja Kampmann

Lightly
is summer
distance writes
the letters of your memory
with a light touch
While a certain Ferris wheel
lifts gondola after gondola
into the air

So too is the night
namely the rising
of an approximate language

condensed water

and so are the days
namely more like forgetting
the averted glance when
the early evening soaks into your clothes

the transitions to earlier
which you become
more like. Drifting on this old steamship toward the Atlantic, Cuba
so are the days
lightly -
the gondolas fall
fall like each step
type cases with dried moths
a collection
that fades away like a whipcrack in the dark.

Translated by Anne Posten