Translation: Six Poems by Klaus Merz
Translated from the German by Marc Vincenz
from In the House, Still Light
by Klaus Merz
translated from the German by Marc Vincenz
Surrounded on All Sides
Watched my neighbor skin a rabbit from afar. That bleeding angel stood as an icon beneath our gilded childhood sketches. She hung splayed behind me on the bookshelf. Red droplets fell from that winged apparition as if blown to smithereens through the short green grass. Heavy bombardment in Kiev, a radio advises from the kitchen.
Day In, Day Out
The news of the day steals away the previous day—and Saharan sand swirls. Around midnight, a ravenous lust rises to snuff yourself out.
Grand Hôtel du Monde
Alone at the dinner table, and I feel quite tranquil in my seat. Across the room, a young woman offers her breast to her newborn. The life force of the remaining guests continues to evolve. I shake more salt, then write: With increased frequency, this soft resistance toward everything that seeks to survey beyond the situation at hand. A newspaper still hangs there, on a hook, completely unread.
Of Travel
I. Staying seated at the table and waiting until the paintings draped on these walls as accursed witnesses, step out of the frame of our short travails through space and time. II. My head buried deep in pillows, I traverse a scenery not illustrated on any map: The coursing rivers flare up old scars. All the tracks rush down through the dawn, back to me.
Precious Night
New moon, and the door to the past leans open. Clear images step forth. A series of lucky occurrences rumble for a few moments under the sternum.
A Gentle Stroll
Still traces of snow along the forest’s edge. Blackthorn opens within a cloud of pollen and the black kite pushes off the hazel. We only survive death through death, my companion says, forging ahead through the bramble.
Klaus Merz was born in 1945 in Aarau and lives in Unterkulm, Switzerland. He has won many literary awards including the Hermann Hesse Prize for Literature, Swiss Schiller Foundation Poetry Prize and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. In 2024 he won Switzerland’s highest literary prize, the Grand Prix for Swiss Literature for his oeuvre of work. He has published over 38 works of poetry and fiction. His latest novel is The Argentinian and his recent collections of verse are Unexpected Development (Unerwarteter Verlauf, Haymon, 2013), What Helios Hauls (Helios Transport, Haymon 2016), firm (firma, Haymon, 2019), and In the House, Still Light (Nocht Licht im Haus, Haymon, 2023). In 2022, Merz’ selected poems (1963– 2016), An Audible Blue, translated by Marc Vincenz, was released by White Pine Press, and subsequently won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Prize for Translated Literature.
