‘Flaschenpost’

Michael Krüger

© Hanser Verlag

Michael Krüger was born in Saxony in 1943, grew up in Berlin and has lived for more than thirty years in Munich. Although a prose writer, publisher (of the distinguished Hanser Verlag), translator, essayist and critic of note, and also the editor of perhaps the most important German literary magazine Akzente, he is best known in Germany as a poet. His first poems were published in the 1970s and most recently he has published a collection Vor dem Gewitter with Suhrkamp in 2003 and a novel with the same publishing house, Die Cellospielerin (2000). A number of his prose works have been translated into English, and a selection of his poems, Diderot’s Cat: Selected Poems, trans. by Richard Dove, was published with Carcanet Press in 1993.

Zu spät

Es ist schon nach Mitternacht,

die Zeiger der Uhr atmen durch.

Eine Schnecke macht sich auf

und nimmt die aschgrauen Worte mit,

bis das Papier wieder weiß ist,

eine Landkarte der Leere.

Mir bleibt keine Zeit.

Wie Wasser, das im Frühjahr

aus dem Stein tritt, sickert

das Frühlicht herein.

Hellwach gehe ich schlafen.

From Kurz vor dem Gewitter (Suhrkamp, 2003)

Cello suite (‘Cellosuite’)

From the window

I see the train coming –

a rusty insect

with pupils dilated.

Its pulling those coffins so sprightlily

through the sunny valley!

Twenty one, twenty-two…

Are they occupied or empty?

Now, with a hiss, its letting off steam,

Which gently floats across to me

Like some unclear message.

I turn the radio up:

A cello suite. In the background

is the musician’s panting

breathing quite audible.

From Wettervorhersage (Residenz Verlag, 1998) trans. Richard Dove