It doesn't help but still
I have to dwell on futile things
how it might be how it would be
if the roots
of an ancient oak would grow
through the chambers of my heart
with their narcotic juices
their poison and their
wisdom of the evergreen
I always sleep badly in March
I go to lie under silk paper
and the perfume of distant foreign yearning
lets me breathe quicker
the hours turn
their seductive rounds
and what I think on these nights
is similar to the buds in March
too early too early
too reckless to be viable
Once in summer
when green tendernesses
slept in half shadows
once in autumn
when the pear trees deepened themselves
into their own embers
once in winter
when snow gusts
blanketed the standstill
once in spring
when someone waved goodbye
on a street corner
something black was blooming
on the black briar tree
Like a curse
this evening arrives
over the Rhine
the towers sink
in the muddy light
the sandstone towers
winding staircase towers
the towers
of the forgiving prayers
the cottonwood on the shore
woven with ghosts
made of pleading
begging sounds
the lips taste
like a foreign voice
from Kissing Nests
Werner Lutz
translated from the German by Marc Vincenz
Listen to the poems read in the original German by Marc Vincenz:
Werner Lutz is a formidable character; at his home in Basel we chatter non-stop for 7 hours straight; at 82 years of age he's more alive and sprightly than ever. "I'm like an old snail. The shell is cracking," he says, "but the heart, the heart goes on forever."
Although Werner once worked as a commercial artist and a painter alongside writing his poetry—in fact many of his earlier books feature both—his eyesight is now failing. Despite that, he's just completed two new collections of poetry, both of which he's eager for me to get translating tout-de-suite. He hands me a manuscript full of scribbles, squiggles, arrows, corrections. "This is >Flusstage< (Riverdays)," he says, "poems that I wrote along the Rhine—as days and years flowed into each other and cheese was maturing. Keep it, I have another one."
Werner's verse is imbued with an almost casual sense of place in the universe (he calls it a tiny place, but with a cracking bottle of Amarone). He has a deep affinity with the natural world of the Alps, and yet there's something more here: Werner's razor-sharp, subtle sense of the absurd in the everyday. "An unlikely Swiss trait," I say, "trying to wind him up."
He laughs. "I'm a country lad," he says. "Working with cows and goats gave me a great sense of the absurd."
On the surface, Werner's poems seem—well, almost—simple. Yet as each line tiptoes to the next, he gently shuffles us into the playfully circumspect, the absurdly dark, the wistfully awry. Strangely, I don't think I've enjoyed playing poetic hide-and-seek—that ephemeral art of lyrical translation, more with any other poet. At first Werner's poems slip under your skin unnoticed, then—possibly a moment, possibly an hour later—they boomerang back and tickle you, force you to break out in light sniggers or even hearty guffaws.
Although Werner once worked as a commercial artist and a painter alongside writing his poetry—in fact many of his earlier books feature both—his eyesight is now failing. Despite that, he's just completed two new collections of poetry, both of which he's eager for me to get translating tout-de-suite. He hands me a manuscript full of scribbles, squiggles, arrows, corrections. "This is >Flusstage< (Riverdays)," he says, "poems that I wrote along the Rhine—as days and years flowed into each other and cheese was maturing. Keep it, I have another one."
Werner's verse is imbued with an almost casual sense of place in the universe (he calls it a tiny place, but with a cracking bottle of Amarone). He has a deep affinity with the natural world of the Alps, and yet there's something more here: Werner's razor-sharp, subtle sense of the absurd in the everyday. "An unlikely Swiss trait," I say, "trying to wind him up."
He laughs. "I'm a country lad," he says. "Working with cows and goats gave me a great sense of the absurd."
On the surface, Werner's poems seem—well, almost—simple. Yet as each line tiptoes to the next, he gently shuffles us into the playfully circumspect, the absurdly dark, the wistfully awry. Strangely, I don't think I've enjoyed playing poetic hide-and-seek—that ephemeral art of lyrical translation, more with any other poet. At first Werner's poems slip under your skin unnoticed, then—possibly a moment, possibly an hour later—they boomerang back and tickle you, force you to break out in light sniggers or even hearty guffaws.
Werner Lutz was born in Wolfhaden, Switzerland in 1930, and is considered to be one of Switzerland's foremost living lyric poets. He has been awarded numerous prizes for his work, including the Basel Lyric Prize (2010) and the city of Basel's Literary Prize (1996). He has published over eight collections of poetry and currently lives in Basel, where he works as a poet, artist and graphic designer. Kissing Nests (2010) is his most recent collection.
Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong to British-Swiss parents. He has published eight collections of poetry; his latest is Becoming the Sound of Bees (Ampersand Books, 2015). A limited-edition illustrated long poem, Sibylline, was released by Ampersand Books in 2016. He is the translator of many French-, Romanian-, and German-language poets, including the Herman Hesse Prize winner Klaus Merz, Werner Lutz, Erica Burkart, and Jürg Amman. His translation of Klaus Merz’s Unexpected Development was a finalist for the 2015 Cliff Becker Book Translation Prize and is forthcoming from White Pine Press. He has received several grants from the Swiss Arts Council and a fellowship from the Literary Colloquium Berlin. His own work has been translated into German, Russian, Romanian, Georgian, French, Icelandic, and Chinese. He is the international editor of the journal Plume Poetry, executive editor of MadHat Press, and lives in Massachusetts. Recent and forthcoming work features in The Nation, Raritan, Ploughshares, The Common, The Manhattan Review, Solstice, The American Journal of Poetry, diode, and World Literature Today.
