Will he who collides with things
be the same as he who harmonizes them?
This is probably it, which saddens me.
Hugo Ball

I

Outside it's still, no tank from Shell
in the frequency of my eavesdropping
no atom breaks off
falls into the canal, no depressed organ
rehearses betrayal and the lily
before me in the dreaming glass -

this flora of my longing also
sneezes its fragrance semiotically
without a noise into the terrifying night!

Outside it's still, the empty parking lot
thrust-reversal of happiness and a tiny
academy
far away Asia threatens
a horn of Poseidon, with freight trains …

And now the world outlasts winter!
The onions lie on the table
the apparatuses of wonder circle -

but the snow is no longer gothic
a perfect ore-form, a light blue
clocked violinist
no, it is grey
and watery, the excavation layers of spring
alas -

and only the lowest snow-angels
remain at the gas stations
hooded and marxist
in their windproof parkas.
II

Outside it's still, mountain and valley are sleeping
motionless city, the misery of demolitions

their slow fire simplifies the space
the heart-afflictions of the trainers
balcony plants

and in the ocean the whale
and in the freezer the eel
delicacies, at the edge of my weakness
lies also love, a ghetto of roses -

the large concrete bodies angle the light
where my hand lies
a yoke for moths
and the poems scurry over the snow
in little steps …

The dead surrealists
grumble apocryphally in the matrix of woods
chewing the star-clover into this night
dry sea trunks, snow climate -

behind the misery of trees
the homeland glows
the elements invent themselves, my Beloveds
lie in conflict and dissolve

the moon from its seat rises up
there its yellow mouth
there its legs, dragging.

Translated by Christian Hawkey