(2)
i'm walking, with oilskin pulled deep over my furrowed brow, along the fulda.
the angle of the falling rain debases itself more and more; soon
it will completely miss earth.
i shake my head and put my hands on my hips. the longer
i think about history
the more a feeling rises in my bosom
that odradek be the earth,
a mantel of raging water over the entirely dried seed
of the peanut—bundled water.
crouching on the floor with wet clumps of cotton
my pottering hands revolve with the potter's wheel,
stuxnet,
stuxnet of the earth,
as if it had been accelerated to 1410 only to slow down shortly after to a few
hundred.
the larger the thing revolving, the more the outer limit recedes,
behind which twine and fresh
clay mix.
in the airlock recently removed slabs pile up, we go past two
half-filled garbage cans
which burn and turn, beside two peanuts
rotating on the fresh cement floor.
i enter the stone tomb, a lightweight tent on the floor. in my sleeping bag
the ermine sojourner truth lies awkwardly,
daughter of the pathfinder.
in the filament dust, which one finds on the floor of all spinning factories around the world,
in the text of the broken-off, old, knotted and
tangled bits of thread
of the most varied sorts
and colors, the ermine plays
and i share it with the animal, which remains
on the inside of its skin, by rocking it
in my arms.
Translation: Uljana Wolf