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 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.)
Silvae (lit)
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
no house like mine.
Sometimes an insect, on the underedge of a leaf,
a fawn-brown target with few
bull's-eyes from last year -
two ancient horses
pull wood out of the debris, with the darkness
come the hunters, you can see their yellow
tennis shoes shine.
Translated by Donna Stonecipher