untitled poem

Author: Ulrike Almut Sandig
Translator: Bradley Schmidt

 

I’ve heard it said there is a place
for all that’s disappeared,

like different sorts of apples
the clowns and gods, among them

even that Good God of Manhattan,
Karl Marx Stadt, Constantinople,

Banaras and Bombay, the names
of too many coal-mined ghost villages

can be found, I’ve heard it said,
in the middle of the white fir forest

that swallows every sound wave.
that place, I’ve heard it said,
can’t be found on any real map.

 

Original from Ulrike Almut Sandig, Dickicht © Schöffling & Co. Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2011
Translation: © Bradley Schmidt 2012