POEMS WRITTEN IN ILMENAU; THÜRINGEN

THÜRINGER WALD

The valley is a million year old
 Formula: meaning, what is a poem? 
The last chance creation is this. 
An upheaval, a certain process. 

The ending of a substratum 
Replete with faults, depressions. 
Perhaps it is the oil of the future? 
A sequence of beeps and silences.

The seismographic landscape 
Is suffering all of us who live there. 
Geological time and its sunbeams 
Are travelling in myriad ways. 

Everywhere industrial processes 
Are forming combinations. 
Brown figures are stooping down 
In the dusk resemble 

Van Gogh´s Potato eaters. 
Vast cycles Of nature are re-enacted 
What is flowing through the littered 
Valley voices in or out of the Spring rain? 

SNAIL


Nature´s stain is also the snail

With its broad back. All his luggage

Is included in this crystal sculpture.


I prod at him. For a moment

He retracts his head.

I pass on, then look back for a minute.


He is still there

The great north sun is beaming. His shell is chill pink.

The great north chill sun declines into the pink clouds.

Wispy as horses tails

Strung across the snail´s entrails.



THÜRINGER WALD 

The hill is over the hill.

The sun is over the horizon.

The landscape´s stillness

Is a well-sculpted end vision.


There are no farmer´s left

But still there is produce.

There are no bank´s left

But still there is commerce.


Even if Hell is retracted

The rest is still coming on.

Even is annihilation is imminent

There will still be a discount.


In Manebach the choir

Sings the songs once

Composed in Erfurt

By a hell-faced child


In Arnstadt. The dappled

Organ music is played

In the Bachkircke:

Sunlight in the square.


Paul Murphy