When I close my eyes the sky is a digger Poem by Odile Kennel

yellow, its shovel so big
that the world fits in. It's the god
of all diggers on earth. This is the one they pray to
with every clack-clack of their joints
their choral hacking out is a raging
against their conditio technica, their groaning
in the roar of the building sites a jubilant
singing with overtones for divine ears.
Straining in unison, their claws
implore the heavens, yet this rhythm
would be perceptible only from above
if you yourself were god, heaven
or a digger the size of the sky.
(Perhaps children sense the diggers' angst
or they want to be god,
operating the shovels.) I open
my eyes, and the sky is a huge
shovel, yellow, dangling
from the joint of the world.



after a line by Carl-Christian Elze

Translated by Anna Crowe