Anna Hoffmann [Germany]

 

 
“Forty years are like a single day if you let the wind pass over theman do not say no …”
                                                                            B. Brecht, “In the Jungle of Cities”
 
No
 
I will wake  - and dream
build a wind trap,
a trap of Sinter  and humming sand.
No longer does the wind pass though hair an ribs,
where, sated of hunger and weary of toil, a YES ripens year by year.
NO
There I want nothing but do devour beauty words
and from the words strip the skin,
and from the skin the skin.
What remains shall ripen under the sun.
 
 
 
Baghdad
 
I understand nothing, nothing at all, not the journey from the airport to the hotel,
or the sleeping behemoths batting their eyelash prayers, or the moon
over Baghdad calling the muezzin, or the muezzin broadcasting
 
luminous letters, or the crows in the machine gun nests, or the chickens
or even the palm trees in the smog. I gather in their ghostly blotches: imprints left by dreams
in the air. Gather unreadable rows of houses. Map – legends without their explanations –
 
arab lace, that pliable light reclining around my neck.make notes:
“weddings downstairs, brothel upstairs, between them the poets” in the hotel Al-Mansur
and “the city is rich in details of destruction”, “the Tigris under stress”
 
and I scribble down what’s niggling at me and it constantly pulsates as though – though – though
yes I know, it’s better if I put my hand over my mouth when I speak.
I understand nothing.
 
(translated by Catherin Hales)
 
 
 
The Spirit of Schiller and Wallenstein’s Heirs
 
“Even beauty must die.”

Out of fear of all of us, the gods open a test track
between Monie’s Shack¹* and Mel’s Hole²*.
 
Wallenstein’s Heir
“My legs won't take me any further,
my thirst does not belong here,
my thinking crochets walls.
I am feed from my wife’s hand.
Before my eyes the land breaks apart,
the promised land, the concrete, collapsing,
my breath shovels and shovels.
In the sweat of my brow I feel
the NOTHING”
 
 
¹*Monie’s Shack is slang for a small shabby shop
 
²*“Mel’s Hole” is an American urban legend about a supposedly bottomless, mysterious hole near Ellensburg, Washington. In 1977, a man named Mel Waters reported paranormal phenomena on the radio.
 
 
 
Author’s Bionote:

*Anna Hoffmann, born in 1971 on the isle of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, studied art history, history and philosophy in Greifswald, Halle and Berlin. She has been writing poetry, prose, libretti and song lyrics since 1998. Her poems have been translated into 10 languages and published worldwide in anthologies by various publishers. Last published books: “Desérdida” (Spanish, translated by Robérto Amézquita), Círculo de Poesía, Mexico 2026, “Babylon Transit” (German/English, translated by Catherine Hales), Hybriden Verlag Berlin 2024, “The Deer of Paris”, Hybriden Verlag, Berlin 2022, “Vlust”, Hybriden Verlag, Berlin 2021, “Medea Mantra”, Hybriden Verlag, Berlin 2020, “Leverin”, story, Hybriden-Verlag, Berlin 2019, “Pandora’s Box”, Parasitenpresse, Cologne 2004 and 2012, “Death Mask” (German/English, translated by Catherine Hales). Corvinus Presse, Berlin 2010. Anna Hoffmann lives in Berlin, Germany.  Her website: https://www.anna-hoffmann.info