Author: Ulrike Draesner
Translator: Iain Galbraith
hiddensee, south beach,
the beckoning bay
a walker down here, light?
rose hips, a house, a head
fluffy plant fluttered up
seaweed – curlicued sand. violet
ghost, or ghost of what:
smile, like light that is pitched
on a point, gnawed, a-giggle –
a child’s face? hollowy like
a cave shadowy for swallows
or mosquito bites, lumps too
skin-close, sandy, even: as light.
a thing that walks whirls reels
liking
even so, so even the beach
in its work of friction, sandy, wanton
sea shining, and flat
us too, built in air. a
violet shadow, up there,
this porous fabric me calling
you
through it. if i say “you”. if
i say “i’d like …” “i …” a
child’s face. oh ghost! porous
shrub: my uttering of you. if.
me saying: you, even, wanton
and flat the sea. come on
you say,
come here.
breast of duck, ruddy,
all down the street
screeching tram, the way it
took the curves the tightest
following through the mike
the conductress’s gibberish
expounding laughing how she’d
hellishly hip – as the
dog on the corner
urged the frizzy bitch to play
gauchely even whistling bumped
his hips against her over and again
minced along beside her all
paws square – and she just
yawned her tongue so
blue
kids played their last
hide-and-seek of the day
the way the tram whizzed now
dead straight along down the street
the way the reflection
of its windows in the tarmac
beat its wings
From kugelblitz. Luchterhand Literatur Verlag (Random House), Munich, 2005.