RAMY AL-ASHEQ ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Seagull Books

       2024

ROBERT WALSER ~ THE POEMS ~

 

The Woman With the Feathers

In the morning I write poems,

then I read amusing novels,

later I play a game of cards,

after lunch I go to the garden

or walk through a lovely grove.

I spend my time in this delusion

that I am a hardworking citizen.

I used to play with girls and boys,

in doing so I behaved rather foolishly,

I made use of my talents,

so as to feel too well on occasion.

Now I go to bed at nine,

I act dignified and proper.

Much turned out wrong, yet now and then

I see in my mind's eye my beloved's full plumage,

her sweet, beautiful, soft eyelids.

_________________________

Robert Walser

The poems

Seagull Books, 2022

translated by Daniele Pantano

ELFRIEDE JELINEK / FURY ~

 

R E A D     M E

HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER ~

 

Seagull Books

TRAMP ~

 

"Why are we walking here, where to? Why aren't we sleeping in a bed,

in a house, a home, in the same room together; isn't it true

that we wake and sleep simultaneously? To love? Love

requires that we be at rest, that we settle down, that we

remain in the same place; motion is loneliness."

____________________________________

TOMAS ESPEDAL

TRAMP

Seagull Books

2010, 2022

THE RABBIT BETWEEN US ~

 

R E A D      M  E

HYPNOS (THE LEAVES), RENE CHAR ~

 

Although the translator wishes to be

a bit snippy about previous translations

of the Rene Char masterpiece — ignore him

and seek them out — likewise take this

new edition in hand and read it with

the same gusto & courage

of the poet

_____________________________

237

In the darkness of our lives, there is not one place

for Beauty. The whole place is for Beauty.

Rene Char, 

Hypnos

1946

RAINER BRAMBACH ~

from Also in April

The year still young. I'm seized by a boisterous mood,

rainwater vat rhymes with sunshine in March

warming my back

and drying the moss-covered stone bench —

This springtime too will bring me by the by

plenty of quiet work round the garden.

What else?

Patience, Rainer, patience.

-

Not wanting to be part of it sometimes

making off into the underwood

past many a silly cow —

Then, lying in the elder shade, timeless,

not giving a damn

if one and one are three.

-

Surely the summer has other names

not just summer.

For instance Olea, a name

combining corn yellow, rye red,

meadow and forest green

in one.

-

To write a poem

without ballast

for instance late autumn

empty snail shell cobwebs

something falling silently

amid the whispers of the trees.

-

Free time working time dinner time

and the time to sleep —

The fast trains the slow trains

the coming and the going —

Early November and yet it seems

I heard the cuckoo just a little while ago.

-

A postcard from the Caribbean

taken out of the letter box —

oh well, Caribbean,

while I — all blessings come from heaven above —

have a white Black Forest in front of me.

-

Ten degrees below zero

and again a hearty

sneeze into the handkerchief

wiping my watering eyes

and skipping and hopping

until the ice puddle cracks

and a delicate spinet rings

persistently in my ears —

-

Never put to paper and yet unforgotten

the soft light of the gas lamps in the evening

the snowball fights won and lost

the downhill races on the wooden sledge

the roast hot chestnuts

in the newspaper cone

and the Hoorays in thoughtless songs.

Beauty of our childhood years, they won't come back.

translated by Esther Kinsky

______________________

Rainer Brambach

Collected Poems

Seagull Books, 2021

Rainer Brambach (1917-1983) grew up in Basel and left

school at the age of 14 to become a manual laborer. 

He spent much of the Second World War in prison and 

labor camps, an experience which greatly influenced his writing. 

Recognition and awards notwithstanding, he remained an 

outsider in the literary world and lived for many years in poverty.

FRIEDERIKE MAYROCKER, ETUDES ~

 

R E A D      M E

KIEFER NOTEBOOKS 1998-1999 ~

R E A D     M E

ALEXANDER KLUGE ~

R E A D      M E

Seagull Books 

2018

PIERRE CHAPPUIS ~

With smooth stretches, with dimples,

with puckers.

Sliding along,

smitten by its own force.

A stream, blazing furnace.

At eye level,

the sun has gone back to bed.

                                                                                    ( vanishing point )

Rain — to speak

through the foliage

without raising one's voice.

Leaves — to smooth out

word by word

the worn silk of their brooding.

                                                                       ( May, the month of May )

Close

surveillance of the water

and the sky nearby.

Flying in veers, in swerves.

Crossing, criss-crossing

the stitches of the wind

as far as the eye can see.

                                                        ( swallows, recovering their territory )

With a stroke, with a shriek, every which way

taking out the tacking threads from the wind.

Playful

arrogant swallows

panicked by an invisible obstacle.

                                                                                 ( idem )

Smooth in its speechlessness,

the vast plain of the daylight

opens out.

Slack, motionless,

yet with no fixed point,

like one coming back to oneself.

                  

                                                                (a new )

Fording.

Haze and light,

from these heights draped

to the other shore — invisible.

The gaze hardly alights.

                                                                 ( in one stroke )

Beyond the haze,

gentle,

the mountain climbs back up its slope.

Vaguely,

in the heat,

sways.

                                                                 

                                                          ( from the window )

Stars in summer

in the trees.

Trills,

night-time outbursts.

           

                                                               ( before the whole night )

Calls and responses

cry out above our heads.

Laths — your support, where is it?

Musical roof frame

ever being renovated.

                                                                  ( mentally, Paul Klee )

Wall  

like, at eye level,

the base of the night

blocking the view.

                                                                 ( non-place )

Steeple, willows,

jagged shore.

Children's luminous

outbursts.

Impalpable hubbub.

                                 

                                                         ( a whole )

At high noon,

in summer,

they are walking through the snow.

At the edge of the road

sparkles

a gravel pile

— a pothole.

        

                                                        ( July, high up )

Cut wheat.

The light, on the ground,

carries the night.

                                                          ( midsummer )

Ice

at the heart of summer.

The darkness

of devouring daylight.

Heat

like a raised stone.

                                                                 ( split in two )

Shadow, daytime ink

like a brushwood made

of golden-headed needles.

Will you last, rampart,

with your thousand open cracks?

Anthracite is such dense

daylight, ready to explode.

                                                             ( daylight fluting through )

Gleeful

gulls have alighted,

as if at he edge of the path,

on a line of reeds

they crease for the pleasure of it.

                                                                 ( propitious white stones )

Taut all day long

the bow of the summer

—noises and echoing sounds—

joins thetwo extremes.

Motionlessness of the heat.

                                                               ( sonorous space )

_____________________

Pierre Chappuis

Like Bits of Wind

Seagull Books

THOMAS BERNHARD (PROSE) ~

R E A D      M E

Seagull Books

2018

A HISTORY OF CLOUDS ~

Atomic Weight 12. 011



All that is black or white or transparent,

hard or soft, sooty or gleaming, all that

we use to solder, shine, heat and write —

that all of it should be one and the same,



able to enter into 10 (to the power 6) different marriages,

form honeycombs, lattices, chains, rings, tangles,

cords and screws, and that what we breathe is

what we fly with is what we can suffocate on,



and that nothing alive lives without it —

no one except those who want to know all

would have hit upon it, and what we,

who now know it, should do with it —



we do not know.



translated by Esther Kinsky




__________________________________

A History of Clouds
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Seagull Books