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Christopher Meckel

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German Poems

As For This Country

As for this country, here is no place to put down
a foundation stone for the time to come. This is no place
for more than a cold being there, excluded
monosyllabic and overwrought. When your bone rambles
inside you, looking for life, and breaks out, hungry
for joy and future, but then returns
restless, world-sore, close to death — where's the companion
without a contract, the brother without calculation? Who hasn't
stamped on his dream or sold it, tuned his speech
to everyone's prescription and advantage?
Who hasn't retracted his head, who does not creep
with half the sun under his hat into the hole
where powerlessness collects dust and love,
a domestic animal sleeps? Where's the man or woman
who neither wears nor applies handcuffs, where is
the place to put down a foundation stone for the time to come?

Here you stay put, ignoring the order: Get out!

poetrymagazines' note: Reproduced with kind permission of the Michael Hamburger Trust.

Translated by Michael Hamburger

Page(s) 156

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