… there were aspen leaves, dry bread, ca-
priciously distributed around the animals' flesh, it was
their fast living which sank at our feet, so we didn't
speak almost as if to say, continuously, ruinously, in the crockery
of their blood, from within: to heat the kettle
to clean the entrails, to carry
the news of of boiled pork
to the village, that

was the high road of the meat inspector
and there
lay his instruments, the scrapers
the auxiliary engine… unpublished
correspondence painfully ridden
to & fro along the time shelves, as

one comprehends a stone, we now accentuate
his absence
his hapless quivering, no sentence
(completed)
from childhood a sow with stammering parting
with faltering saddle
out yonder (whoever
quivers so haplessly and goes away)

has what it takes for a novel
has the emptiness
of moderate light, alone
we are nothing, frau koberski

and frau koberski alone
was able to stand
shoulder to shoulder with yearning, the
shrugging of shoulders to
old tunes (now she would have loved
to tell us the whole story
of the life of the meat inspector) now

she was showing
photographs; an innate strand hotel…
the prints of birds alien to us…
there must have been several
we do not know, we ourselves

feel rejected
destroyed, badly stockinged by the date
incredible are our doubts
incredible is his palor… a subtle gleam
in the kernel of his gait
would have announced… ‚alone'

he was going alone, but
not really alone
in the buzz of a fly
which flies away
like farmhouses
in the roar of the road
across the roar of the farmyards
we know, we said;

even if he
wasn't really sick
he was really sad
after everything that happened
sick and sad
like the meat on the table
like the meat
of the last big test animals
rotates under the microscopes, he had

once more set off
from the duration of his century
and century long flight
from the ground of his craft
to the inside of the bacon

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser & Gabriel Rosenstock