CONCERNING SPECIES
the neon body fluid from the pines sticks to our paws
it crackles when we shave their bark
like we shave our scalps
surrounded by trunks rubbed bare by wild boars
we wander in the rank scent of the fawns
sharp signs of incorporation entice
until we are drenched in our own sweat
and dizziness
we emerge from the tangled woods pungent
barefoot and sink into the agitated meadow
as it feeds and teams
where mammals rhythmically move their mouths
and patiently gaze at us with intimate eyes
MID-JUNE LIGHT
I breathe in the twirling praise of songbirds
so they have not yet died
plump speech bubbles linger in the air
ongoing inception evolutionary spurts decay
ants pull more than their own ancient dead weight towards my feet
spiders weave filigree threads from their glands
pinecones crack and burst open
in the heat
we have seen everything, understood nothing
and released the seeds
ground wasps emerge from their burrows right
next to my human face as it rests there in the sand
to peek out and crawl back
growth and food
mandibles and this entire
indeterminately ailing gaze
EXTRALINGUAL
I swing oldly
in the hammock anchored to the trees in the forest
as if in a baby’s cradle
in which I never lie
at night
pine trees with their flaky bark
speak to me
truthfully
as their sap flows
their resinous body odor embalms
everything through the black branches
crescent moonlight flows across me
year after year
from the drifting-away moon
SMOLDER
must I then say farewell world from your sweet
salty waters and green hills
I have seen you from above like a
space traveler
you are so tender and full of grace
every slice of decomposing street pizza still hurts my soul
we are being duped
and discounted, my heart
in dieback
our scars like to break open and bleed
we extract the last of our strength like fossil water
the sleepers never manage to rest
the light- and soundscapes swell
the devices are always transmitting
we must bow down
Translator’s Note:
These four poems come from German poet Kerstin Becker’s latest poetry collection Das gesamte hungrige Dunkel ringsum (The Entire Hungry Darkness Enveloping, 2022), which received critical acclaim and was selected as a Poetry Recommendation of the year by the German Academy for Language and Literature. Becker’s poetry stretches the German language as if it were a viscous membrane layered across the world, combined with an immediacy that recalls the sticky sweat of countryside summers, the disquieting un-darkness of summer nights, or the peaceful (Hegelian) recognition between species.
Her frequent rejection of orthographic and syntactic convention makes her poems thrilling to read and challenging but rewarding to translate. My approach to trans-creating them in English involves two stages. The first is to dissect the poems and parse them out. Some poems will not include any punctuation or capitalization—grammatical features that in German go a long way in clarifying the structure of a poem—thus rendering the poem simultaneously more open and more closed. The second stage—once I’ve deconstructed the poem and done my best to understand how all the pieces (words) fit together—is to focus primarily on the image and/or sense that I interpret an individual word, line, or poem to be offering in German, and then rendering that in English. Yet, occasionally, I render a turn of phrase more obliquely rather than “fluidly” so as to maintain a sense of the German.
Becker was born in the former East Germany, where she still lives. Among other jobs, she has worked as a cemetery caretaker and gardener, occupations which lie closely to the mood and world of her poems. There is an almost grimy freshness to her words, one that conjures vivid activity in the imagination. In a way I find hard to describe, Becker’s poetry sends me back to a childhood that typical representations of childhood don’t. Perhaps it’s because her poetry digs into the dirt of the earth and of life, and that reminds me of the farm I grew up on. Perhaps it’s because they reject cozy nostalgia, which I do too. Perhaps it’s because some of her poems remind me of how it felt to spend an entire August dog day exploring the woods after doing chores, and of the layers of dried sweat, mud and dirt only partially washed off by a swim in the creek. Perhaps it’s because Becker’s poems, insofar as they can be taken as emerging from her life, remind me of a previous stage of mine, one that I now look back on with fonder eyes than I used to. But her poems don’t rely on recycled pastoral romanticism. No, they get up close, to the damp earth, to the swarm of wildlife and wild life. To the teeming warmth of it all.
Kerstin Becker (b. 1969 in Frankenberg, East Germany) lives and writes in Dresden, having also worked as a typesetter, a bartender, a cemetery gardener, a teacher, and a translator. She is an editorial member of the journal Ostragehege and the author of three collections of poetry: Fasernackte Verse (Fiber-Bare Verses, 2012), Biestmilch (Beast Milk, 2016) and Das gesamte hungrige Dunkel ringsum (The Entire Hungry Darkness Enveloping, 2022). Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Czech, Hungarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. Becker has been awarded many prizes and grants for her writing.
Bradley Harmon (b. 1994 in Minnesota, USA) is a writer, translator, and scholar of German and Nordic literature. Currently a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, he has been an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellow to Sweden, a Fulbright fellow to Germany, and an Emerging Translator mentee with the American Literary Translator’s Association. Forthcoming book translations include poetry by Johannes Anyuru and Katarina Frostenson and prose by Monika Fagerholm and Birgitta Trotzig. He currently lives in Berlin.
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