cancelled grey tickets from an era long
gone, the writing paper like a palimpsest over
the undeciphered text of sawn-up tree trunks,
a plumbline, a round stone with blood-red
crystals inside like a bi-ventricled heart
enclosed by connective tissue, an empty printer's case,
a hand reaching for something lost, damaged at the ball
of the thumb, a railway sleeper, a polished
glass plate, as heavy as the dumbness of things,
the silence, the breath of air from the skirting board
near the chimney, the current of the electrically-stirred
surface of an aquarium, on the walls
pictures of windows, as if forced open by frost,
photographs of pupils under a magnifying glass, seeing
what?, in the mirror drops of sweat on
oversized membranes, the letters n - e - v - e - r

(dresden, neustadt)

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser & Gabriel Rosenstock