Steffen Popp
Steffen Popp Poems
I
Imperceptibly cultivating a style, wind from the Northwest
and the garage door compose a flowing rectangle
...
Sap runs out of the trees, as usual
the forests stand, wooden and green
before my window, and everywhere on the earth
where there is no field, no garden
...
Movement (air), sea color (green), a hedgehog (the technique of a coyote
to flip it onto its back) — your heart, the nearby port
stretches itself on its sleep-edges. Feed in sacks, munitions boxes
the unnatural hoof of a donkey in brackish water —
...
Empty balconies glowed, islands suspended at the outskirts
the air, presumably sleeping, lazed around, a ferry
I leaned my head into her torso
...
A kind of love, between the apartment-blocks
with snow-ears: unreal, outside time
the stones lie under the ice
the frozen brake-marks, the drunkard's
...
Tired is my eye, tired tired
like Alps. An enchanted distance
of years is my face,
fields, in which I slept -
...
I pray, I pray, alone
among green foliage I munch on chips, salty manna
-
City, vacant mountain, the moon aims
with the composure of a bricklayer
...
Will he who collides with things
be the same as he who harmonizes them?
This is probably it, which saddens me.
Hugo Ball
...
Heart's domain, neon and slow exchange of these wares
- somehow meditate, somehow stay awake -
as the scene mesmerized us, with its highs and lows
the evening is full of speech, but the words limp
...
O elephantine Pan in the china shop of the muses
behind the veils you look for song, you practice
thinking: "We are
a conversation," you say, "We are
...
Too few resources to think of all that occurs
vegetal fate, i.e.: Decomposed in the Clay Pot.
Bored by our styles the intensive disgorges us
into the light, humus for spirit, microbes.
...
Steffen Popp Biography
Steffen Popp was born in 1978 in East Germany. He studied German literature and philosophy in Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin, where he has lived since 2001. In 2004 his collection of poetry Wie Alpen appeared; in 2006 the novel Ohrenberg oder der Weg dorthin (both at kookbooks, Berlin). For both his poetry and prose he has been awarded several prizes and fellowships in Germany and Austria.)
The Best Poem Of Steffen Popp
Auratic Agrology
I
Imperceptibly cultivating a style, wind from the Northwest
and the garage door compose a flowing rectangle
the emotional project, strung out
it hangs before us, in the air, breathing laboriously
we seek to bind love's structures
in conversation, in the long forest-walks
through fog.
II
The heart foams heavily in its gazebo of pain
wild vines, screams, dry roses, silence
darkness spreads geometrically in quiet rows
in the island's hem of water lilies, floating pond scum
and forests are and
premises, within which you vanish
the area, naturally artificial, correctly incubated
the loneliness of your mud boots, pragmatic
under your white knees
and in the evening can we not hear, behind the drunken roar
of lost witnesses, your swans in the biosphere, singing.
III
Always in shades of tiredness
snowed in, in mountains, in plains, in one's own body
to encounter—a
distant shore, overgrown with light,
floating in self-invented fog . . .
Odd correspondence with narcissi, saxifrage
this special technique was called "living", "home"
instead we wanted to go deeper into the distilleries of tenderness
to never end this undistracted Yes
words, their sorrow, penguin tracks on the pack ice
—to look at you walking, breathing, to contemplate
your childish fists in sleep . . .
IV
Speaking exhausts the community of pain
future settles on thought like a mold, like fire
in the rotunda, a red horse standing there, made from copper
the blood in your fingers, the party lights
ring the trees like a wilted piano.
To walk around, restless, striking a few keys
sometimes the music lures something out
the instant in the play of twigs
a longing, carved out of cheap stone lovers announce the night
cold fusion, centaur
whoever steps within range of trees is alone.
Translated by Christian Hawkey
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