Author: Uljana Wolf
Translator: Christian Hawkey
THE AWAKENING ROOM I
oh had i only stayed in the awakening room
lost in dreams tied to drips beneath white sheets
where others also couldn’t find themselves
a flock of sheep close to sleep close to god
and consolation and large nurses in white fur
– our shepherds bending softly over us –
if we surrendered one another to the human
riddle of numbers: on a scale of one to ten
how heavy is your pain? – and if there were
no borders that could again define us in
these fields, in the postnarcotic sniffling –
we would stick very close to this our i
indiscernible from other sheep grazing here
beside themselves in the awakening room
German original © KOOKbooks, Berlin 2005