Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Equisetum
For the horsetail the facts are these:
it was much larger at one time,
a few hundred million years ago.
Devon, Perm, Keuper –
those were the days!
Later its dainty shoots
served Grandma, yours and mine,
to scour dirty pots.
Now it’s not used any more,
only its ancestors, gouged
out of the deep, are fuel still.
Horsetail ignores us,
does not need us, discreetly proliferates.
In boggy roadside ditches
it waits, more simple than we are
and invincible thanks to that.
The measureless future calmly awaits
its glorious geometry.
Translated by Michael Hamburger
Page(s) 97-98
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