ANDREW DUNCAN

poems from Das verlorene Alphabet  
(recent anthology)

Thomas Gruber


Scanned Blackbird


who CANAL-FILLED SIGHT! washed-up beast-chaser in the checked shroud
purest genetics ("duke-ellington-rings"), who along with (open) 
hurdy-gurdy
engraved SIGHT OF A BLACKBIRD "was combed through, grain and thread":
the terrain of a blackbird ridge-walking, holdings of "SLUIZEN", a 
sort of
amstel-like sobbing, that is sluiced under the skin & has confluence
with rhine metaphors, a long O MILL-DRIVER...FREIGHT CARRIER!
recently
faded painting on wood "when I was still pageboy and with silver 
cutlery", yes
dis sect
artist ("look at the scissor cut, dr tulp'), this tomically four
times draughted dirt-blackbird, this anatomical illustration by 
legendary brow.
far snow dome, coming away, holding "the BOARD, EMULATOR BOARD was at 
the height
of the FOR EXAMPLE dizzying eyes CLENCHED THROSTLE
swaggers,
as CESURA, TO APPROACH THIS PICTURE OF A LAB ROOM IN A."
a sob ("engraved on vases, take a look") surfaced
names like REMBRANDT & RUNELIKE, almost, the tulip
known to the trade "TU LIPS", yes, in the HURDY GURDY amsterdam 
locker 


Gregor Laschen

The Bird Text

Across the sky as it always used to be the strokes
frozen into the white, far after them the sounds.
The earth, last region of defeat, blue-
and grey-seamed bed of ashes, from which now
individually, at times clumped by the wind
the last feathers rise up, gather over
the hasty vestige of the feet in the iron, in
the book of lava, unread, traces swim past. So
life goes. Driftsand comes into the picture
with the oilfish in the sky, behind it the shores of Palestine.
Africa's fresh graves. Skies
standing on their heads. Very individual and sometimes
clumped the feathers
over the region, writing under the surface,
signpost for this old blind flight. The bird's
text is ahead of my text, just a
little bit, a few eye-lengths.


Sabine Techel

Tulips

	Close actually to vultures in flight they
are doubtless constantly (or past) superfluous
in a way (how it hurts, a part that is
Gone: here the synapses lie). How
Objectively they died.

	Are they arms, that they
Fly up and down? Them
Yellow fat lustful north-east. This
Blind and toothless laugh. All
Mouth they put their deathmask on show.

	They have just come from praying and
Now are falling on each other's shoulders. Their
Eyes waking still quite shy of
Light. Their honey scent brought
from far off
	As if
A skin had been rolled off them
They stretch and roll at will
Daily a different animal.


Hansjörg Schertenleib

Bone

Metal sheet, the sea. In the evening
riveted with meadows and slopes,
which break against the town.
There they are, most of them.
Here old men burn
their sack in the garden, big as a cloth.
Then the church tower falls over.
Then the schoolhouse falls over.
Then finally I get up. Large
as a dugout the cigarette
on the sill of the window looking over the water.
Sheet of slate, the sky. Now
riveted with the edge of the brow,
which breaks against the wood. 
There the roots are like bones.

Ulf Stolterfoht

mother tongue 1968/2:
Ernst Mach death society

trick sense (by statute: to save experience)
reckoning for the abuse, its hide brought to the market
-so spoke guild-racked in the house
of the ropemaker: "you've swept back-now chop!". too late:

he wasn't weaving any more-he was twisting by now. and
was lost to the world. or else "connect" what
description can supply? answer: "spawn
lives in the smallest pond" shows what is poss-

ible with a stump. of course a Leibnizian reprimand.
perhaps today: how you conduct your newt
to the plughole. quite incidentally much pond saved through
businesslike staunching PROBABLY the researcher's nobl-

est deed the cretan question, "world-loaded" in favour
of "speech permeated", resolved. the whole
matter set as nothing: when words, what they themselves
corporate at all events feel in their suffix, their reference

must be a taking. up UP you signs un-
daunted: you've cut the cord-now navel! a tugging
comes at times. spoke coarsely of "in consideration':
on the alien knot, out of the by now unsaved swamp.


Dorothea Grünzweig

The Island of Seili

The mark was burnt onto them
they had to go away
took them away from their families
carried them blind with tears
through the maze of skerries
with planks on their arms
their coffin boards
arrived
passed the wooden chapel
where the parson
scripture-laden
was to scourge their unclean souls
over the cemetery hill
to the sick barracks with
their sheds nailed specially
for them and
they understood

Here in the nightingale nights and
here under the ice axe where we speak
with a hundred tongues
and none understands the other
is our dwelling
we will hang together and
with our despair
three times daily in acute silence
walk a wreath round the sandy shore
so that if it ever flew here hope
would find us

and must rock our names
sitting on the edge of sleep rocking rocking
they scratched our origins off us
now they are bones
bleaching

oh Home we call on you we beg
together each for their own one
let our grave in the grass over there
be the eye of a needle
when we pass through it
let us
see you
Home

They travelled across and around
the island with their coffin houses
on their backs
and when their time had been worn down
it tore and
when a wooden cross grew out of the hill
too slender for sayings
for numbers
they crawled into their house
and the house crawled into the earth there

This happened a long time ago and
it's said that out of the hidden corner where
it lies the island would one day
with its freight
(or without should this be quenched)
drift away and
disappear who knows where

for the time being though
under lime trees in whose shelter
voices waver and pierce
open ears
it is still here

(Seili, an island on the west coast of Finland, was for a long time a 
place of exile for lepers, the mentally ill, and socially 
marginalised in the times of Swedish and Russian dominion.)

Gerhard Falkner

Kulturkampf

in the furies' stable
at the parade ground behind the captain of horse's bunk
the sinking shadows
of the widening bank line: east
the display ground
of the Prenzlauer prole number 
from the schnapps to the assault
swept downstream
to the swale of the marsh marigolds

German fortress, cooed to the skies
up until the second Zero Hour
the staggering backwards
rebellious emptiness
as lords' dish 
for those led by mobs
the half of a burst Bautzen
in the distressed high-rise
of child artists
high dry and kaputt.

on the Kollwitz Platz, left
three steps behind the night
there the
dusty avant gardistes
picked clean down to their shirts
go rolling down the garden path 
onto the bone-dry
bleaching ground






From other sources

Peter Gosse
The sculptor
(Jahrbuch der Lyrik 97/98)


1
Müller, world-scale Saxon,
Stung by Burgundian clarity
Takes stock.

2
Picturer? Well yes, I make
Likenesses. Life, the senseless unfine,
Imperious and wonderful that.

3
Living, an animal, obstinately licking
A milk in contention-
Müller's gaze rests on it, a bright green eye
Brightly and unwavering, akin.

4
Naturally you can poke about in your nose and,
Using the free hole, blow grievous.
But what carries it in the end, he says:
Prying the core out of the shell:

5
The high floating soap gets wiped off,
The vanilla blather gets wiped off,
The corruptible.
Since large behind the
Traits wavering with chances
Lurks, and in faces,
The face of the species. 

6
In fact, to lay bare the framework of becoming,
The yeast-beauty of its bony dome-bearing-arches
Lying bare.

7
And the voiceboxes of women, clumpy
As they, split, send the
Clucks of their healing glowing
From episodes into the aeon.

8
So into the wood going
Forward shell by shell, forward
Into the once-was blow by blow,

9
And a shapeless, so shelled to
Convex superdense clenching,
Becomes memory.

10
(Meanwhile outside they are
Distracting themselves very pleasantly,
While with very nice distractions
-Happenings, Wrappenings-
They are distracting each other outside.)

11
So into the stem
Stemming an advance with steel,
Double blow dulled and shrill,
Bastard blow, twin blow at the heart,

12
And takes on shape, shapes,
The clattering hunger
For hope.

13
Ah, how the whole becomes whole, how it
As if loses itself behind the separations. How
Gromaire, now, Brancusi, Zadkine, lose themselves,
Nodding, the gruff brothers.

14
Happiness-what is that?
Loneliness and collection
And with the all going up against the nothing,
And you must equip it
For yourself.

15
As he has no mind
For the transient: why should
The transient
Be reminded of him.

16
The blows are slow
With which he 
Forges his link
About the chain of duration.
  

Günter Herburger
(from Akzente)
The Potato

We know it, without her we would have
died out or a few of us left would be
sitting in caves again and gnawing on thigh-bones,
as my grandmother did at the end of the war,
but then she went out, flagged down a tank,
and ordered the commandant: Monsieur,
de la viande, mais subito!
She got tins American style,
and had herself buried much later
with a half ton of these tins,
at that time a heavenly idea, which we mastered.
The sextons demanded, once they too had
reached the pub, extra fees.

There is the Generous Helen, the Pampus, the Sagging,
the Little Lotty, the Hollanders, the Icelanders,
which actually in taste and texture
are very little different from the French.

Potatoes are children, we were called that then,
when we gave Serbs or Poles, shut all day
in cattle-wagons on the station,
potatoes through the hatches.
Many of them died of it, but the Russians
in the last waggon ate them raw
with red cattle salt, which we scratched from the ice of the streets,
a thawing aid.

Frederick the Great, with a serviette on, said,
it's repulsive, but it will save us. 
Bonaparte said something like it,
and my grandmother said, les pommes de terre,
the Grombier tasted without salt like stoneless kidneys,
which she liked to eat in sour cream with green onions. 

When I was little, potatoes were buried in autumn
in chests full of dry sand,
but in spring they went bad anyway,
and their oozings had gone poisonous,
a remedy against green cataract and puerperal fever.
But if you ate the sprouts, you got ill,
some died of it, others, tormented
by pus round their teeth,
in their appendix, or in their ear,
were healed, as if the blight had helped.

One of my great-grandfathers emigrated to the Andes,
didn't want to stay in the Evangelical world,
took his guinea-pig named Hablar with him.
When I finally arrived, these creatures
were everywhere, bigger and fatter than before.
They were the cows, at four thousand meters up,
were beloved, then slaughtered and sold.

I saw my great-grandfather again, that is,
a few chaps drunk on potato schnapps
declared, suddenly becoming spiritual,
his head was on one of the stakes.

How possible, I asked.
Thoroughly: the potatoes are dried,
turn black and small with traces
of iron and copper in them, which makes them
long-keeping and poisonous.
I asked, shall I eat them?
The Indians said yes.
The Indian women said it too.
Only after all the women had given a yes,
did I eat the head of my grandfather,
the little potato, which tasted innocent,
and the Qechua, standing around me,
struck my shoulders with laths.
They proclaimed, it was all true,
I must only have faith,
and struck again,
till I woke up.


Heinz Czechowski


Sketch for a Biography

Half-ruins here as well. And the bunker of the dead
Rising high above the place. Street names
Around 1900 Naunhofer, Ludolf Colditz,
Kommandant-Prendel-Allee, At the Waterworks,
Moraine Strasse, Monument view, Russian Street,
Schönbach, Paper Mill Strasse-
At night
The houses swim
In grey gravy. No light
In the pubs.

The army worm
Threw its tents up, Batteries
Hurled into the villages, living torches, peasants,
Unhoused, commandeered for hauling service. Lenin came, 
Lenin went: a myth
Dissolved
As if in a drink. The quiet now
Hacks into your ears. The shout
Of the woman next door.

Have I 
Been sent here, to
Grow old? My body
Sometimes still 
Plagued by desire,
And what you call
The soul
In conflict.

The chimney of the bakery in the yard: bent
Like a saddler's needle. The villages
Ring round the place: Thonberg,
Lässnig, Probstheida,
Wachau and Meusdorf. What
Was left of them: signs
Of strain and
Wasted effort. Mourning, my word
Scratched in the stone, behind it
A field path in Saxony, the mill
Boarded up, the barking of dogs, 
Accompanying my walk, back
To the table, where the paper
Is waiting patiently.

The battleground,
Built on in 1870s arriviste style and
With dwellings: private houses, which
Forgot their occupiers. Na-
Poleonstein, Mon-
Arch Hill: history
As Will and Representation, the world
A burning ball (it too
Reminds me of something, which
I forgot). On the ice
In front of the bunker Breughel's children: winter scenes,
Reminiscent of childhood,
As far away
As if it had never
Existed.

In the evening
Climbing the Mount of Olives,
Behind the furnace-block
Broken coffins, rustling
White paper.

The world
Falls apart anyway,
Like this part of town, one
Does not have to be a pessimist
After all,
To grasp that. One more time
I stretch out, to bring
Everything to a common denominator: to the totals line
Of widows and pensioners. Tell me the name of the country,
That reassures itself,
In order
To become a country again...

In Lauchhammerguss
Rusty tablets, announcing
A great century, resurrection
Part of the programme: pyramids of glacial scree.
History
Has overtaken us,
Stops responding to the controls: ricochet,
Trench fights
Without spade or bayonet, grinning bicyclists
On the way to Baalsdorf. Last welcome
From the bottle. The dead bunker
Denies itself to us. Only place
For setting out into the past:
The waste region of Kolmen.


Jan Faktor
Text for speaking aloud


We need a new lyric poetry
we need lyric not just for pushing and smearing
we need lyric not just for getting up
we need lyric for seizing control

lyric which gets by without pubic hair
lyric which keeps its elasticity after midnight
lyric from in front and behind
lyric you can lick and fertilise
lyric with pores and flat feet
lyric which swallows and gurgles
lyric which is alert even when asleep
lyric which holds the impulsiveness of solids within bounds
lyric which subverts itself
lyric which thrusts environmental maps quite innocently into card 
phones
lyric which is above water level even in cellars
lyric which is the first to find out where the spiral binders are 
bunkered
lyric which not only in the anglo-saxon world regards the chopped-up 
as something other than what it is
lyric which puts on its own ointment and in case of need walks to the 
cemetery on its own
lyric which knows that not even an acid bath brings the final purity
lyric which does not laugh at sharpshooters from behind
lyric which can not only operate pressure cookers but can expertly 
put them out of commission

we need at present simply much more lyric poetry than we have got
we need lyric as pacemaker for entire cliques
we need lyric which has no ***
we need lyric with healthy obstinacy
lyric which stores salty ice-cubes even in unsealed fridges
lyric which in good faith props itself up on unwashed dishes
lyric which can with dignity chew dry biscuits
lyric which does not rub itself selflessly on partitions
lyric which does not forget to study linoleum patterns while drinking
lyric which can ruin not just one single childhood
lyric which does not go red with rage when that is said about it
lyric which smoothly and evenly makes fruit rot
lyric which forces failures into non-existent interzones
lyric which visits archivists with ventilators at the ready
lyric which sometimes lets dreams be evaluated by third parties
lyric which can fully cover the costs of loss-making enterprises
lyric which deforms logarithmic curves with footnotes
lyric which is not only written by its managers but also gets 
tattooed in their faces
lyric which with a few holes in its skull can talk much more clearly 
than before
lyric which never puts the right values on maturing experiences
lyric which puts its retailers under pressure only when it is too 
late
lyric which realises even its crudest errors of navigation only 
months later

we need these lyric poetries like salt
we need these lyric poetries unconditionally
without this kind of lyric poetry soon nothing will work any more

we need lyric which jumps over its own blisters
lyric which at need gazes deeply into the backs of its own knees
lyric which mis-grips slightly when the wares get too hot
lyric which regularly breaks its hands
lyric which makes lyricism fit to build on
lyric with a false bottom and an empty wall
lyric which convulsively gives away its knowledge of Rottweil
lyric which can do the poses it can do at world-class quality
lyric which is not being simultaneously translated and compromised by 
mediators
lyric which sponsors the music of pneumatic drills and adapts them 
for festivals
lyric which picks up all defeat with an icy cold
lyric which always trips on its own tie when it goes too far with 
cleanliness
lyric which is surprised when it does when it set out to do
lyric which pronounces umlauts so accurately that it hurts
lyric which performs slackly when the expected pimples don't show up
lyric which lives in unhealthily damp surroundings
lyric which evolves eloquent allergies
lyric which supplies expensive lobbyists for card-sharps of school 
age
lyric which deftly makes chopped-up thoughts into preserved meat
lyric which in cramped sitting-rooms easily becomes transparent
lyric which is doubly unhappy when there is nothing to make it cry
lyric which in the mornings while carrying the coal becomes 
hormonally hysterical
lyric which in deepest winter sends agricultural machinery into the 
fields

for the as yet undiscovered gaps in the market we will need really 
much much more lyric poetry 
more than the empty yet undiscovered spaces and areas would let you 
suppose

we need lyric poetry which never gives anything away
lyric which on calibrated bathroom scales gives way to paranoia
lyric which at the sight of slightly bulging meat tins becomes unfit 
for combat
lyric which bows in an unreliable fashion
lyric which laden with secret missions suffers from a compulsion to 
eat breakfast
lyric which cooks too much when it cooks
lyric which when it has wind gets spherical twitches
lyric which unscrupulously renounces precise offers
lyric which immediately offers contracts to friends going to meet 
each other
lyric which pumps up soft and wizened passion fruit with silicon
lyric which through persistent voyeurism causes stomach coverings to 
pulsate
lyric which makes difficult people sit separately in cafes
lyric which blocks the free flow of its talent through massive 
inhibitions in the oral sphere
lyric which at just the hint of an invitation gets biting attacks
lyric which deliberately shares out physical joy unevenly
lyric which likes to sit near offset machines in wet nappies
lyric which likes to shove its fingers in front of unprotected lenses
lyric which brings turntables with great elan to a standstill
lyric which has to learn breathing from the diaphragm painstakingly 
in front of strangers' doors
lyric which always leaves bankrupt masses half-kneaded
lyric which reports to the police where the most bombs fall
lyric which commands sympathy from the ranks of sympathisers only 
after the strongest prohibitions
lyric which in blind rage wastes the remains of laundry
lyric which is on the slide because it is doing the same thing with 
unbroken perfection
lyric protects longings passionately and by remote control
lyric which only when made a free fire zone realises that everything 
didn't work as planned
lyric which unleashes replacement writers on abandoned orphans
lyric which lets trial costs be laundered in Micronesia
lyric which explains wide-ranging breaches with naivety
lyric which faced with tests of promises always goes for the throat
lyric to whom you can't say anything because of its chattiness 
lyric which must limp unsupported into the target when it has no more 
cigarettes
lyric which gives way to professionally unreliable mood swings
lyric which forces its elite cadres through planned operations to 
mixing with bad people
lyric which is not shy of finding prebends for its best researchers
lyric which treats skin ulcers with carpet glue
lyric which in the space of seconds falls prey to a permanent lack of 
time
lyric which with an air of cool gives heart massages to sleeping 
contact-men
lyric which uses official shelters unconventionally for masturbation
lyric which likes to give medical stores to friends to try out
lyric which carelessly distributes glass splinters among the seated 
guests
lyric which coldly calculating gives no I'm safe calls from crisis 
areas because it would like the most possible people to say it was 
dead
lyric which in its ignorance has no problems with installing living 
workers into depressive environments 
lyric which runs across meadows just as much as across high-tension 
bridges
lyric which doesn't stop even when all around have long since slid 
beneath the tables

in the future we will need a whole mass of new lyric poetry and in 
the interim we are accepting everything which turns up and which is 
lyric poetry by lyric poets

lyric which through skilfully placed syncopes can bring whole ceiling 
assemblies into danger of collapsing
lyric which can only enjoy cheap food in moving taxis
lyric which has experienced everything except torture under water
lyric which without fresh supplies of neologisms cannot credibly keep 
up its pantomimics
lyric which only under pressure from groupies allows its cushion of 
flab to be microscopically investigated

lyric which smears its thighs with rancid butter before robbing a 
bank
lyric which makes torsion bars into fellow-culprits of its newest 
tricks
lyric which in its absence has the temperature of cold buffets taken
lyric which with a view to the future takes part in conversations 
when its mood is bad
lyric whose traffic policy is staked on six-lane one-way streets
lyric which illegally self-prescribes lentil massages and baths in 
any quantity
lyric which after collisions very quickly finds the survivors crying 
in the side streets
lyric which while lifting up obstructive bulky waste tips gently 
backwards
lyric making demands which because of their absurdity are never quite 
understood
lyric which can only hold mass ensembles of lyric poets in check 
through deployment of terrorist projectile weapons
lyric which in hermetically sealed rooms shatters all performance 
records
lyric which hires command bridges for show-meditation and for group 
carouses
lyric which gets fanatical at the wrong moment
lyric which whips up bodyguards other people are paying for against 
cheeky kids
lyric which always only notices at the moment when the straying 
tourists are sitting in the bus or on the train that it told the 
idiot completely the wrong route
lyric which in grass roots projects always drills much deeper than 
stipulated
lyric which has itself cosseted to the point of falling over
lyric which so distributes the communes across the country that no-
one has to get their hands dirty
lyric which lies about its fascination with dog droppings and 
flattened hedgehogs
lyric which sends its identity crises to the Near East to relax
lyric which is in a position to turn even the proudest vegetable 
growers into sows
lyric which stores the books of its writing dachshunds in the second 
shelf of it bookcase
lyric which at book launches over smoked salmon talks about 
salmonella and tapeworms
lyric which in its passivity is driven through ever new stimulants to 
sexual excess
lyric which shares its biorhythms with stuffed animals
lyric which incites entire mixed choirs to protests against 
optimistic fans
lyric which launches itself self-destructively at the musical-
ecstatic tone
lyric which joins in the postmodern managed slander campaign against 
itself
lyric which has distinguished firework disasters to its credit
lyric which has entire Egyptians welded up inside their poems
lyric which figures out an hourly rate for its creative slumber
lyric which with its glass gaze unknowingly turns roll-calls to pulp
lyric which day by day finds it easier to say goodbye to first-class 
leftovers
lyric which through the right sort of contact with the right sort of 
literature can only become necrophiliac
lyric which sends entire groups of its friends on tours on the wrong 
steamers 
lyric which despatches those who have never been entranced by genuine 
top lyric poetry to sit-ins on motorways
lyric which only knows hatred -- amazingly though can still smile 
beautifully
lyric which falls upon young lyric poets and reads them their 
freshest creations until they faint with shame
lyric which makes itself up with lubricants and in the wrong places
lyric which while keeping itself moist contracts dangerous 
dependencies
lyric which with barbaric methods forces heavy metals to sing at 
inaudible wavelengths
lyric which when looking at living creatures cannot draw away from 
the idea that each of them is carrying its shit inside -- and so with 
-- itself
lyric which when it feels threatened provokes of its own accord the 
total break with its own union
lyric which tries to talk with men marked by contact with chainsaws 
about creative crises and processes
lyric which orders entire editions of new ruched gowns for high-level 
bottled beers
lyric which with the help of bribes moves its temple into 
conservation areas
lyric which practises the finale without having opened its bank 
accounts