I (Town)

Chequered wood thinly inscribed easily broken
glass. Alarm. The walls once book clad. One stands
before this fine orderly dust. Another
stirs the green in the air. The tree-trunks
black with the soot of the praying. Workers hammer
a street. Ambulance.

II (elegiac)

a draft of air from gesturing ladies shakes acacias
and laburnums in their plumage the birds leave
the dust and throw themselves (stones) in the rigid
heat riding on the hills: Warder Acrobat
Cistern Clock. I am too heavy for any air. With my
nose I count my fingers on the flat
I am sitting pretty on this fence
III (Legend)

Now he could see shapes in the inner mirrors of the house
unpainted they sat there with puffed-out cheeks uniforms and
cravats snug on their checked shirt collars reciting
Prussian names: for months I haven't touched beer

reared up fluttered with bent arms when
he banged the door his days were filled with
intelligent wildlife toothless lion's heads from Biblical
gardens old circus material and sawed-up female stars

drawn by white horses in the restaurant hearty
blond women came up to his table juggled with shopping in parcels

Translation by Andrew Duncan