Reiner Kunze

journey to Russia, 1968

The moon a
bent needle a
surgical sewing-needle ina half-stitched wound

Somewhere
behind woods at a distance
doors

Somewhere
behind the words Glorious land Magnificent

Their names are
well-known

The moon a
surgical sewing-needle that got stuck when
they called out the surgeon

Ahead of us
flashing blue lights: get into the
slow lane, poets
are driving

past

The Moon a
surgical sewing-needle in inflamed flesh a
nomadic needle

    —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

another kind of hope

A grave in the earth

The hope of rising from the dead
in a blade of grass

(No slab

So as not to come to grief
on stone, as in life)

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

perspective

no, don’t
shift the furniture, dear

The man who
moves things around in his head
his desk must

stay put

   —Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

summer in L

The postwoman’s cleaning the village postbox as though she were trying
to give it a glimmer of hope
of a letter

The cows lying there are revolving their ears
like helicopter blades
without rising
even an inch from the ground

The buzzard circles round and round
till it draws your blood

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

facts

1
Drunken rowdies have tried
to cause disorder in K, reported
the capital’s press agency in the morning

One element had
burnt himself in public

Who will deny that
alcohol burns

2
The people have managed to restore
order, the press agency reported
in the evening

Who will deny that paratroopers
are part of the people

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

your head on my chest

With my right clavicle
we are locking ourselves
into sleep

Should I mislay it in some dream
we’ll take the left one
to open the door to wakefulness

Hold on, hold on tight,
sleep has got deadlocks and pawls

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

poet, not crucified

They come to touch fame

But nowhere
is even a whiff of laurel

There isn’t even a crown of thorns

Just the brow you happen to have

And so they go off and inflict
their errors on you

thorn by thorn

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

Erasmus of Rotterdam

He knew what bridges know: they link
above water what
is linked underwater

But one bank was swamp,
the other fire

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

page from a diary ‘80

The climbing roses bloom as though the countryside were bleeding to death

As though it had opened its veins

As though it knew what was coming

The countryside too, they will maintain,
must no longer just be allowed to be, it too
must be for or against

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

meeting you again

Not inclined
to ask for mercy
   —Peter Huchel

When your digests report the losses
your newspapers keep their silence about—then
perhaps

But we won’t finish counting the days

I’ll leave you who plant your conversations
where they ordered the roots to be cleared
the meeting-place for you to leave:

at the blue stroke of the kingfisher

which only leaves its terrain
when the brooks
are iced up right to their very sources

   —Translated from the German by Richard Dove

Reiner Kunze was born in 1933 and studied philosophy and journalism in Leipzig from 1951 to 1955. Beginning in the early nineteen sixties, it became increasingly difficult for him to be published in the GDR, and in 1977 he left for West Germany. His poetry, prose, and essays (as well as translations) have won him numerous awards. In 1989 he gave the Lectures on Poetics at the University of Munich.

Richard Dove is a noted translator of Fredericke Mayröcker, Kunze and others. The poems published here from his forthcoming Kunze manuscript, Like Things Made of Clay: Poems from Five Decades

English language copyright ©2006 by Richard Dove and Michael Hamburger.