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.