Maribor Poem by Anja Kampmann

a heart failure of light
an overlap into yesterday
a river with plums on the banks
pears a market
and when tito came the villages
and when tito came the healthy
men and the healthy women
and the children who took their dogs on ropes
away with them
and afterwards
and in the woods the shots
the woods the woods the hills
with soft greenish light
and in autumn in summer winter
and the early abandoned year
as it followed the others
it followed followed each other away
the fishers the butchers
nuts to gather nuts
a hollow thud from inside
an emptiness in the fruits and who
picked them up who ate
of them what remained maribor
with spines of glass of glass
the dogs came back first
with their long slack ropes
that were never dropped only held
tighter and pressed in the
blind hands the forgotten hands
with the lashes
to go swimming to dive
in the village lake in the village pond
in the depressions of the landscape
in the reflections of a new day
the lashes lashes and the dog's
rope in the day and under
the memoryless clouds
in greenish greenish
where someone came where everything fades
as one goes.

Translated by Anne Posten