Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!, Folge 41: Ulrich Johannes Beil, »The table’s gone«

German Poetry Now: A bilingual online-anthology, featured by DAS GEDICHT chapbook

 

Ulrich Johannes Beil

The table’s gone

No sooner than the shipping company carries off the cargo,
the room starts sensing everything you do.

It breathes – listens intently with its walls
to the slightest creaking from the hardwood floor.

The remaining things are watching you:
the sunglasses, dignified, an Aztec insect,
the wallet with its sly Mephistophelian smirk.

(Did you clear the drainage of the hairy glob?
Did you free the bathtub, spick and span,
from the ghosts of daddy longlegs?)

You may go over here and over there –
but there is nothing left to do.

That even a grain of dust is composed of something
(some sort of filthy atom),
beliefs are rattled in the emptiness.

The table’s gone; take the floor.
The cup’s gone, take the shoe.

Of yourself not much more remains
than this beam of light on your forearm –

in the window the fragment of a planet
that meanwhile has forgotten its roundness.
 

translated by Paul-Henri Campbell

+ German Original / Das Original

 

+ About the author / Zum Autor

 

Lustful Things - Geile Sachen!»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« im Archiv

»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« is an online collection of contemporary German-language poetry in English translation. All poems were taken from issue no. 22 of the German poetry magazine DAS GEDICHT, focused on the Poetry of Things. New English translations by Paul-Henri Campbell as well as the German originals are published here every Wednesday. All poems of this online-collection are also published in a special print-edition. In order to read previous poems in this series, click here.

»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« ist eine Online-Sammlung zeitgenössischer deutschsprachiger Dinggedichte in englischer Übersetzung. Alle Texte sind Band 22 der Zeitschrift DAS GEDICHT entnommen. Jeden Mittwoch erscheint ein neues Gedicht, das von Paul-Henri Campbell ins Englische übertragen wurde, zusammen mit dem deutschen Original. Die Beiträge dieser Online-Anthologie gibt es auch als Sonderausgabe in Buchform. Alle bereits erschienenen Folgen von »Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« finden Sie hier.

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