Demands

When I still drank water from my cupped hand under the damson tree at high noon. Today the world is atomized, electronic shadows flit through my hands. Mathematics has become our home, atomic models in the nurseries. At nightfall the birds take fright at the sudden hush, ears open, and the poem, not marked on any map, forgotten, once more demands to be heard. Translated from the German by Ewald Osers