Saturday 20 June 2020

Klaus Høeck: 'Ulrike Marie Meinhof' (1977)




The ninth day of May, nineteen seventy-six.
The redcurrant bushes are flowering like flames
from the murky chamber of Hell or Sodom.
There is bright sunshine in Sunday’s universe.

Strange to relate the swallow’s not returned yet
with the happy falsetto of a death scream,
Bach’s D minor concerto’s on the wireless
and I myself sit playing my one-man chess

in order to avoid the other problems
mentioned in the magazines and newspapers.
Neptune’s still retrograde in Sagittarius

like a silent, passive player in the myth.
In her cell Ulrike Meinhof’s hanged herself
early on the morning of the ninth of May.


This is one poem from the collection 'Ulrike Marie Meinhof'. To see the translation of the entire collection, go to here

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