WLT Student Translation Prize – Poetry

gapless

you can count everything once more, it’s missing
no wind gauges, square structures, time.
nothing has moved in the camouflage,
in the winterbite of this night.
from pitch to pulse, all counts for the rest,
other than you everyone moves:
in snowspeed, flakefollowings.
evading each other, just because,
shoulders and collars set like sails
against the wind and one another.
you duck down and wait, count everything once more:
the birds, the puddles, half the moon,
cause no one sees you and shouts into the crowd,
cause you still do not know what’s missing.

Editorial note: This poem also appears in Mantis 23.

sleepless

as if something’s tipping over in the dark
behind the breastbone, oozing away while breathing, 
since the air is now cool and the glances of others
so windowed off; as if there’s something that rubs and knots,
as if the elbows kink inwards
and grow in through the ribs,
as if also the hands branch inwards,
as if a forest there, under the tongue,
a leafy discord in the throat,
and then the cracking of twigs behind the eyes,
the increased overmossing of thoughts,
until out there a forest around the bed
and within, the fists, in the ribvault.

favorite person

i throw myself into your blackberrygaze;
want to take root behind your ears,
where you smell like cat and summer coat —
i want to mossgrapple and poppywallow with you
and dwell without address on the hill.
i want to caress all your shadows,
sing in your dark corners,
i want to buy you countless moons,
a porch and a rocking chair;
i want to breathe you in and speak you out,
talk myself raw against you.

Translations from the German