[my heimat] Poem by Ulrike Almut Sandig

i have forgotten the names of the large birds
each june a brood falls from the ridge of a barn that now
stands empty. later in the year they stand stiffly on the fields,
from the street the coats curdled white, from a distance
smells of cheap bouquets + steel + possessions
affected by the storm the other day: my heimat
in the heimat names break on the soil's ridge,
in a word: what is raised there i find strange.

Translated by Bradley Schmidt