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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Fourteen: Deformed Sonnets

March 5, 2018 by Jan Herman

What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
As poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
Under unbearable duress and only with the hope
That good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
— Czeslaw Milosz

A bilingual edition [2017] English-German
Click to purchase.

IV

I was there in asphalt
in ozone dreams.
I was waiting for
a cool stare from a window.
I was made of physical coordinates.
I was particle.
I was a dark sea of genetic codes.
I was illegal.
I had listened to laughter
in the next room.
I was gone between the snap
of two fingers.
All the clocks in Switzerland
like a maiden aunt had come to call.

IV German translation by Gregor Pott.

Da war ich nun auf dem Asphalt
in Träumen aus Ozon.
Ich wartete auf
ein kühles starren aus nem Fenster.
Ich bestand aus körperlichen Koordinaten.
Ich war Partikel.
Ich war ein dunles Meer aus genetischen Codes.
Ich war illegal.
Ich hatte gelauscht dem Gelächter
im Zimmer nebenan.
Ich ging verloren im Schnipsen
von zwei Fingern.
Alle Uhren in der Schweiz
nun wie Amme, die auf Abruf kommt.

Portrait of JH by Gerard Bellaart [2017]

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Filed Under: Art, Literature, main, political culture

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
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