Thomas Möhlmann

Mother come out of the tree

with your thread and all day

there’s been no one to talk to no bird

snared and on the table inside

two empty plates two warm glasses

without wine and here your poor chair

all alone without you don’t you see so

come out of that tree dear mother out

the chimney no smoke under the kettle

no fire and the goat filled to bursting

is nibbling on the rug by the door and the chicken

lies there like a bouquet of dried flowers

and when I dropped the vase the pieces

scattered everywhere and in my mouth

everything just grows sweeter and already around you

there’s a swaying and creaking under the full sky

so come little mother come out of that tree

with your thread and your tins, with both your legs.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Come little father show your teeth, not

your advancing insights: your being in the right

must be habitable for me, truly I’m pleased

to see you content, that you’ve established things

no one can take from you now

doesn’t mean that everything has grown better for it

only your own world is makeable

not  the one in which I give you a grandson

and I want to be able to talk with you about that

father so it’s  time to show your teeth again, more and more

stupid people are said to be in the right more and more

and of course they are voters but what do they choose

you built a beautiful palace dad

on swampy ground, I too believe

in good intentions but

more and more in teeth

I still accept much of what I’ve learnt

but nowadays I chew before I swallow:

not your opinion this evening

not your wisdom with the years.

Your teeth.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

While he hurriedly looks for a cloth

the beer seeps off the table onto the floor.

Where the envelope had lain, the table shrinks.

You’re a bit like her, she left

the way she came, you never knew for sure

for how long. Did I love her?

The last time is two years ago

but the lamp she left behind and

I leave that lamp on, I was afraid

to hate her and I liked that fear.

Outside the window the evening grows clearer

on the window-sill my card

the wire has a switch.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

There was rain in the air

and humming in the ground.

I knelt and looked straight

into her face. With the earth

on her fingers and the spade

across her shoulder she led me

through the onset of the rain

into the house.

Mumbling followed and a rummaging

with cooking utensils. No, I have nothing

to eat, but plenty of pots and pans

for when it rains and a shoe and a chicken

that sometimes lays an egg, somewhere.

When everything has been carefully arranged

and not a drop falls on the floor anymore

she kneels down on the bed and, humming

all the while, builds a new hole

in between snores she sings a little

my husband left me his left shoe

I did not bear a son

whom it fits.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Outside a driver waits patiently, for you for me?

There’s another side to all this that we can’t quite reach

I promise you not to open the door before the bell rings

as long as everything stays the way it is, the bell won’t ring

he keeps his car door closed, sits and sits and in the dimly lit space

lights a cigarette, allows the first smoke to escape without a sigh

doesn’t look but stares, in the nonchalant realisation that in the meantime

we could not but get up and open the curtains

just a little bit. Your driver? Mine? We ourselves should be

more indifferent, or more in a panic. Footsteps

approach, pass, disappear and a few streets further on

footsteps approach now, will pass and disappear and

the last smoke spirals up into the motionless cabin

at our door. There is another side where we will

meet again, even once the bell has rung, even after

one of us has nodded to the other reassuringly.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Every step diminishes and increases the number of options

but it’s not the options that he’s searching for

there must be another road than this one, but as soon as he

takes that road, there must be another road. He talked to people

introduced himself under different names and asked if they

knew where they were. On the high sea, in the navel of the world

at the edge of well-tended front gardens: people

didn’t know. Where the air became so thin that he grew dizzy, where the thick

air took his breath away, where everyone stepped on everyone’s toes

where no sensible person would venture to go, where everybody must

have been: people didn’t know.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Each time a different name, everyone comes and goes, as long as he’s

standing still there we don’t worry, should we be

worried about him? He doesn’t offer his place to anyone else

now he’s stopped moving altogether, there are always more

places left where you haven’t been yet than where you have been before.

One person stores his climbing boots in a locker, another shakes

the dust off the toes and books a three-star destination. He appears

to move sometimes when we’re almost asleep. Can anyone replace him?

Anyone tie his shoelaces? Someone becomes entangled in a body

and would love to turn into an umbrella on the spot, blown away

a stick flung in the wrong direction. He moved! But to give his place away:

absolutely not. Hooked to us more determinedly than ever

wait and see what we’ll call him next, the possibilities

roll along the rails. Are we hoping that he’ll disappear?

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Like a zebra crossing that doesn’t know when to stop

an invitation with no date or place as if when

he stands still I too will stand still but he never stands still

an enormous outflanking movement a city with no centre

an accumulation of centres a meeting point for gusts of wind

a merciless machine of possibilities a pedestrian

surrounded by paving stones traffic lights cars waiting for green

bicycle couriers giving right of way and nowhere a bench

to collapse on comfortably as if in a word

something beautiful is imminent and everyone should simply head

in the right direction we shall win as long as we want to and above all as if

I have something in store for him a sensible question

an illuminating answer the beginning of sense.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson

Plumped down where they used to stand

the forehead pressed against the arm

face to the ground, breathing quietly.

Above the earth, under warm blankets

under solid roofs, haphazardly

curled up, turned inwards

while the world opens like a hand

while fingers look for other fingers

other fingers other fingers and the fish

rock the sea to sleep and the ships their cargo

and the radio the father and like a soft shawl

the father the mother, the lamps the night.

Why are you keeping watch. Why must

somebody keep watch, somebody be present.

English translations by Judith Wilkinson