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❝With the year, reeds grow tall
and their brown pistons
burst with wool.

Wading water in the morning,
the fisherman hauling
his tarry-bottomed punt along
across my shoulder.

I am a legend,
a grey eddy of water,
swimming among
the leaves and fish-traps.

In the freshly-flushed baskets
of willow roots,
swaying with the spawn
of fish, my jewellery,
in the safe-keeping of pikes' jaws.

As dragonflies
criss-cross the light of summer,
the unmoving light
of reed-bed and water,
I languish in the prison of the lake.

The bittern stands,
a willow stump,
in the green ooze of algae.
And beyond the fogbanks of the moon,
the hornet's grey honeycomb.❞

Peter Huchel, 𝔘𝔫𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔢
translation by Martyn Crucefix

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"Have you seen the ballerina who is dancing the reading role?"

"Of course I have, I'm not blind after all."

"Don't you think she's a bit... otherworldly? Orphic?"

"She has to be, it's her role to be enchanting."

you fool