Silke Scheuermann
(b. 1973; also novels, essays, short stories; worked as literary academic; first poetry collection 2001 winning prestigious Leonce and Lena Prize together with Sabine Scho, also other prestigious poetry prizes since then )
Requiem for a just conquered planet with intensive radiation
But what happens when we’ve told ourselves all our stories
ten thousand cool stories
the lexicon of our pipe dreams has been spelt out
and we’ve worn out the seats of our star like the sofa
on which we very precisely got to know each other
when we then sit silently at the window and smoke
nights of almost perfect stillness
in which only your last sentences echo
They talked of us
two actually being heavenly bodies
possessing such a great force of attraction
that they don’t even let out their own light
that is don’t glow but are black
narrators burned up by their tongues
For the Once Most Common Bird in the World
To be the last of a species
what a strange role
Since you once had other ideas
of constriction and vastness Very different
from the Seniors’ Suite in Cincinnati Zoo
Martha last passenger pigeon in the world
what a dilemma, you were so tasty
Just one deli wholesaler
sold eighteen thousand of you in 1855
to hungry New Yorkers
If in your aviary
you miss real flying
remember your flocks
thousands of metres wide
or your breeding colonies
fifty by six kilometres How you
when the first European
emigrants came to America
darkened the sky How you left them standing
in the dark for hours of amazed computations
Remember the time before
the killings and the railway network
A few wild animals
threatened you
The Day the Gulls Sang In Duet
While the water recedes and jellyfish remain
untouched by the salt
the oxidation and the sun
you envy the children boring their heels
into the sand for shells their security
with a force that totally
stuns you
Your eye has been cleansed now has more precise pupils
while the surf eats its way back into the sea
something is missing
a few years
in small bits like the back of a stamp
white as octopus flesh the gulls have taken
There is a pain its connection severed to the head
Tendinous oil streaks cover
the waves lead through edges of foam
to back then
and into
the time
you slowly frayed went down the stairs
of farewell to the beach here
– you can still swim, but you’ll no longer
swim yourself free –
I know the jellyfish surprise you
by their ability to be ugly and yet transparent
and I know that you’ll now
demand to know screaming what I’m looking for elsewhere
in the hope I’ll ask back
Prism
That kind of blindness which we learned was
necessary for clearer vision the way
magnifying glasses arm the eyes
marshal the family into view so that
the tangle of their interests has to be revealed
in the ocular: everything bad
including its proofs of power
We were always dragged before all tragedies
and no one was allowed to leave in the break
I didn’t understand why
I long understood nothing at all and then a lot
and actually right in the moment I sat on father’s
glasses and only half-remained intact
a single round glass: Cyclops’ spectacles
Passing on the Flame 