Thursday, 17 December 2009

Another Hester Knibbe translation


Light years

It’s a marvellous world, you said,
with those trees, marshes, deserts,
grasses, rivers and oceans and

so forth. And the moon’s all right too
with its more or less
soft-gleaming sheen and motion. Include

besides the wingèd M, voluptuous
Venus, hot-headed Mars, dead-lucky
J and that sour-puss Saturn of course plus

U and N and far-roamer P, in short the whole
solar family complete with its
milky way and then add on all those other

systems with specks and spots and in
that infinite void it’s a commotion of
well you know. It’s a magnificent

universe, you said, just take a good look
through the ready-made glasses of the dark
at a desert for instance or on your back

in oceans of grass, just take a good look
at that rorschach violence, that’s where we’re
standing somewhere, together.

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