THE AWAKENING ROOM I

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