Christopher Whyte 

Übersetzer:in

It is night I can see,
no need for car headlights.
Among the trees a hundred different greens,
pile of mute forms
I try to get my hands on:
my fingers rain on every leaf,
I snake along the crowns,
nurture the roots.
Of course there are voices, too,
and I remember a time
when I was part of this.
Now I want to write and am
only a faint soughing through the trees.

I summon up your memory
from the dried wine-stain on the marble
worktop of the kitchen.
I trace it with my fingers.
No way of knowing who today
is marble, who concentric,
dry, repeated marks of paling
red. Wine and bottle
have vanished, but the two of us
continue tracing pointless circles in my finger
as in a car that has no doors,
or an impact that never ends.

First thing in the morning I wade into the river
all alone. No-one accompanies, awaits me,
beyond the unfailing current carrying me
towards another river, another day, to the same
smell of a cloth for holding trout: ‘Here!’
The same hands, but they’re tiny, tightly
grip the black handle of the landing net.
I hear my little spool rewind,
bend patiently over the water,
on a flat rock with trees around,
early evening, silence, mosquitoes,
I see, rising from the river, my
father’s broad back, pulling in,
slowly stretching out his arm,
throwing, pulling in again,
wearing a cap and big green boots,
the same boots with which warily
I test the river’s bed, the stones,
slippery detritus of the years,
then turn, lift on the line a trout
that flaps relentlessly, and move
upstream, letting the hook lodge, till
I reach, father, the flat rock where
I’m waiting for you, hand-net ready.

Exchange your eyes for mine.
In crying, you can set
my blood’s salt content right,
and learn how deep the wells that open in me are
when all I seem to do is laugh
or hum a tune.
Exchange your eyes for mine.
Then I can learn the inner making of your words
before you utter them.
Talk will be superfluous, and pain.

Don’t worry:
our hands will trace our lips
at the moment of each kiss.

If death or illness in another
creature is also our own
death or illness,
then this sharp blow, shrill yelp
of a dog a car has hit,
blood streaming from its rigid paws,
frozen in movement, head and eyes
of an old doll glazing over,
tell me what of which
destiny of mine?

Unter den Linden I explore new spaces
with the fear of one who meditates
escape yet gets lost at the very start,
interrogate a possible defence
among voiceless, nameless faces marching
within the metro’s suffocating closeness,
run aground in ice-white loneliness
while the desert underworld proceeds
given that right now, Unter den Linden,
the lime-trees’ peace and their shade are as nothing
since I am dispossessed, and of myself
have only the old, sad witness I bear.