Erik Lindner

Translated by Francis R. Jones

from Witnesses at the Threshold 


A plastic bag slides off a branch


and floats down onto the market 
where a girl is crouching to brush her hair
the key-fob clenched in her mouth 
the teeth of the key pricking her chin


on the stage bouquets in a pail


two legs together, one
raised higher than the other


the black bird in the field
beside a tall dark tussock of grass


a shepherd resting his chin on his stick
as the flock dreams around him.



*

Horses teaching their foals to run
the horse trotting the foal cantering
the horse walking the foal trotting
past the tape in front of the fence
into the corner of the paddock


a dragonfly hovering over the water


rain splashes up from the paving
the garden hose chicanes through the grass 


a bird hops onto the edge of a garden tub
above the bricks laid out in arcs


sunlight traces a line down the corridor
and casts a windowpane onto the wall


the sprinkler sprays across a treetrunk 
the mower snags against its cable.



*


Witnesses at the threshold we are
the candle burning in broad daylight 
the orange under the bulge in the window


the sorcerer's apprentice holds out a hand
for his bride, the motionless cape, chandelier,
the green dagging on her sleeves


faithful as the dog guarding them
the brush on the chairback
the broom against the seat


we are witnesses at the threshold
no-one can hear them
and yet it somehow still gets through.

​

Poet and novelist Erik Lindner (b.1968) made his poetic debut with the collection Tramontane (1996). Four more collections have followed. Lindner is also founding editor of the literary journal Terras. He is a poet of close, almost cinematic observation. In his poems, events and non-events concatenate, sketching out a sense of being-there while reflecting on one’s presence in the world. Book-length selections of Lindner’s work have appeared in Italian and German.




From ‘Witnesses at the Threshold’ first published on Poetry International Web
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/4004/6/Erik-Lindner ;
The originals are in Acedia, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 2014.

---

---