Kosmopolit (by Durs Grünbein)
Kosmopolit (by Durs Grünbein)
Original Text
Durs Grünbein, Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).
This
poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2006 International Shortlist).
1The day after getting back from my longest journey,
2I realize I had this traveling business badly wrong.
3Penned in an airplane, immobilized for hours on end,
4Over clouds that bear the appearance of deserts,
5Deserts that bear the appearance of seas, and seas
6That are like the blizzards you struggle through,
7On your way out of your Halcion-induced stupor,
8I see what it means to stumble over the dateline.
9The body is robbed of time, and the eyes of rest.
10The carefully chosen word loses its locus.
11Giddily you juggle the here and the hereinafter,
12Keeping several languages and religions up in the air.
13But runways are the same gray everywhere, and hospital rooms
14The same bright. There in the transit lounge,
15Where downtime remains conscious to no end.
16The proverb from the bars of Atlantis swims into ken:
17Travel is a foretaste of Hell.
18Did we know what makes the world go round?
19 That love tends to isolate
20Seemed clear enough. Everyone kept it for himself,
21 His personal thorn, till the blood
22Soaked through at the worst possible moment.
23 It was rare for anyone to remain uninjured.
24More commonly, the pain transferred itself
25 To the other party. To be left
26Was the worst evil, to be insentient in spring,
27 Stand like an amputee under the busted
28Ferris wheel … The way the wind carried us
29 Into the treetops from which
30We were later to fall with blissful cries.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011