The signals come in from the dark
By Daniela Danz
Translated By Monika Cassel
intermittent signs of clarity
the simplest request for a hand to
help you up or for water a blanket clouds
of migratory birds launch upwards into flight
at the margins they circle above us in the dusk
night draws in from the east and also
the slowness that has been lingering
uselessly at a decommissioned rail line
a murmur comes from the margins
first quiet then mixed with resentment
the margins blur the beautiful contours
of the fences against the red of the sunset
the salt pillars of people who turned
around: bizarre memorials on the horizon
I stack the laundry I have ironed in the closet
and look over to where I sense something moving
hey I say with an awkward wave
of the hand holding the iron did you see that
over there by the margins those signals but I hadn’t
noticed that you had already left the room
and I look for you outside in the courtyard
where a remnant of light is still hanging in the branches
of the aspen whose yellow leaves
have formed a circle on the ground
a dreamfast circle of self-evidence
now ships appear at the edges of sleep
and want to liquidate the freight they are carrying
and we go to the harbor to help
it’s hedgehogs huge freighters filled with containers
full of hedgehogs being unloaded by cranes
so we hastily start to plant hedges
watering them constantly years of endless patience
lie ahead of us but then we see
thousands and thousands of shallow little bowls of milk
shining in the moonlight before we climb
into the morning exhausted and the first rays of sun
hit the glass façades in the city center
from the margins the trains rush
into the windy tunnels bringing all the
day laborers temporary workers guest workers
in from the outlying areas the
desolate zones where only the children
and the unfit now remain
the wolves and lynxes come back from
the margins they are beautiful welcome
animals only the demolition experts hem and haw
and the farmers are up in arms but in general
everything is quiet in the cities the activity
of short sales and derivatives flashes up
and disappears until a trade crashes
and explodes in the middle of an apartment so that
its residents can no longer afford it
and one last time they serve
some of the fruit they’d managed to grow
from old seeds they had saved and then
smuggled into the building in
those big heavy striped Polish bags
and the room begins to slide the
doors and windows fall open: the wolves and lynxes carry off
the apartment (which had never really felt like home
to anyone anyway) out to the margins
back into the all-encompassing darkness
Translated from the German
Notes:
Read the German-language original, “Die Signale kommen aus dem Dunkel,” and the translator’s note by Monika Cassel.
Source: Poetry (December 2023)