Four Poems

Abstract

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 33 top photo : flickr . com / limxd Not Here Right Now Away from home at home. Shadows under a canopy of leaves. I sleep in the guest bed, water the neighbors’ flowers. A couple of days, clear down to their ground for being. To which continent does Patioland belong. The sheet on the line swells in the wind: the garden hoisting its light sail. Manicurist Seamstress’s cuts softened in chamomile tea. How cool the holy water on the fingertips. Work-hands, scrub-hands, and their rutted lifelines. A girlhood: at playtime, using tar instead of polish to paint her nails. For the Sound Archive Soft sound through your slightly open window, a line of sound bisects the morning’s hush. Someone pulling a wheeled suitcase unstitches the seam between night and early day, leaves tracks in uneven ground, ploughs a quieting rut in his wake. Wine Tavern, Last Call Provided there’s anyone still left hanging around after the morning pint, the evening school begins. One can observe him, the graying barkeep, as he sets the lunch table for the next day, attentive to contour lines adjusts a glass, repositions cutlery, sets candles bolt-upright, and folds swans out of cloth napkins. Translations from the Swabian By Tegan White-Nesbitt poetry Walle Sayer is a Swabian lyric poet, born and raised in the sixty-twometer shadow of a fifteenthcentury church steeple. He belongs to the Association of German Writers (VS) and PEN International, co-owns Klöpfer & Meyer Publishing in Tübingen, and holds the Bad Homburg Hölderlinpreis, Hermann-LenzStiftungpreis , and BadenW ürttemberg Staufer Medal. Tegan WhiteNesbitt is an Alaskan artist from Fairbanks. She met Walle Sayer as book, then man, while studying linguistics at the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen. Visit the WLT website to listen to the Swabian versions of these poems. Four Poems by Walle Sayer ...