Hsien-Ku's photostream

(from 'Nearly Birds')

(From Märchen)

(From Märchen)

He pauses in the warm air rising
from a u-bahn station – for a cigarette
or only to see the subway's citrine light
reflected in clusters of icicles
under streetsigns
then walks on
following the river's curve into quiet unearthliness
vacuum: without birds or pedestrians, sliding
between cars immured in snow
and the icebound canalboats

he walks thinner than a soldier's trace
again through Soviet lines – toska
of night trees, where the victory angel hangs
over discarded new year's eve rockets
and bottles frozen in ice
and ringed by cannons from three Prussian wars
he sits on cardboard
office lights glimmering through pines
and the bestiaries of shadow evoked
under branches

from their balcony in Kreuzberg
she watched schoolchildren paint
giant cosmonauts
over bricks scarred by machinegun fire
they cut photographs from prohibited magazines
splinterbombs and wire, the Geisterbahnhöfe
where trains do not slow
and read fairytales in slavonic languages
of wild stags that erupt from sleeping men
in black and bodiless flight
while for the sleeper years unfold
in an eyelid's fall
augenblick

he makes rosaries of black ice
rolling each bead in his fingers
until the creeping dawn blankets him
in a snow-light so perfect
that morning red cross workers hesitate to disturb
as if, should they come closer
even this last light would scatter

and when they leave
the snow retains the curve of his skull
and ice shears from winterheavy branches
with the bellow of antelopes

(Judith Crispin)

(From Märchen)

these dog-days
heavy with the incubation of storms
we drag folding chairs
to the edge of the supermarket carpark
the concrete-edged garden
facing an expanse of weeds
and plastic bags waiting
for wind

you open an art magazine from Berlin
paintings from folktales: the Erl-King and Wild Hunt
the briar-throated Lorelei – too romantic, you say
naive

but I have seen them sleeping in the fields
albino animals: horned and harelipped
carnal as plants
their bodies undressed by flies
and the heat that flattens
they signal to each other at night
with the clicking tongues of bones
lying under grass

the Berlin Philharmonic who once
performed the ninth symphony for Hitler
will this season reclaim Beethoven from his portrait
hanging above the sideboards of Weimar

clouds racing
their own shadows, evoke
miasmas of horsemen: vertebrae
and flared nostrils, the severed limbs of animals
wind tasting of salt, hums
through garbage-cans and shopping trolleys
like a call of flugel horns
and the dogs are barking

an essay by Gunter Grass, repeats his warning:
that the moving train is preprogrammed for disaster
commuters press pale faces to the glass, for a glimpse
of Brandenburg Gate, its warhorses shaken by jackhammers
by the orchestra playing the ninth
between bulldozers

do you see the antlered man, turning
in a machinery of trees? his hair dyed
with the resin of flayed oaks, turning
toward us with a gaze made vulnerable
by limepits and the abattoir's musk
a gaze that utters an die Freude
like a love poem
while from his open hands uncoil
the carrion-birds

I reach for your hand
but you have already gone

(Judith Crispin)

(From Märchen)

After the flashlights
had returned from the escarpment
and the reproach of neighbours gave way
to a silence more brutal
she would tell them
of the black trees, the white trees
rooted grave
where the sun has no access
and the dog glimpsed
between elbows of thick branches
a dog who owned no shadow
or whose shadow assumed the form of birds
and who carried a child's shoe in its mouth
through woods that no real dog would enter
woods ringed by autobahns and built
on the rubble of destroyed apartment blocks
and soviet tanks
and where it passed she wrapped wire
around the trunks of the pines
stark
white
stark
in another room
the television drones its test pattern
but now she stands in an open window
as the wind moves across the yard
and folds floral curtains
into her arms

(Judith Crispin)