Unio Weasel Poem by Monika Rinck

Hark! Hear how honey chronicles mock, in amber & ambergris:
delightfully (or frightfully?) the weasel couples in the thicket
with the cylinder head gasket, tubes, fan belts, twitching parts.
How fleet the weasel is, how heavy the very braked car wreck
from whose leaks synthetic emulsions flow, shimmering pink.
Crazy 'twas, the chronicle tells, as pines themselves did divest.
Needles dropped, arrows, dainty and fresh, barely controlled.
That's the heavens' blondest projectile - the sun? Or Sonja
with the silver rifle? Scenting stags. Birch trees mimic alternators.
Low on prey drive, a felled octahedron lifts its nose from the trail.
Ah, spare the forests, instead of stacking them with broken stuff.
For in good time, this old tub will inundate the pleasures. Recently
fit, in tender loving union with the remains of the tin roof (shed!),
now in a wretched state. Derelict. Condemned. Unio Weasel Finite.

Translated by Nicholas Grindell