What Times Are These
Yesterday, in the wood,
a serious talk
with the trees:
if we had our way,
ran their rustling discourse,
there would be no such thing as nature.
What about us, I asked,
alarmed at the prospect of loss,
what on earth would we do without it?
You'd have to make,
out of second, first nature,
answered the trees,
and deal with it
just as you deal with us.
And in the meantime,
the leaves whispered fervently,
we would run wild, wilder than wild,
so that you, as strangers,
could, later, discover us once again.
When they had said this
they vanished for ever.
______________
Diderot's Cat
M I C H A E L K R U G E R
translated by Richard Dove
selected poems
Carcanet Press 1993
