ID's (fragment) Poem by Erik Lindner

1. What matters is just that it's somehow right
the chance to be a component, to belong
to a company, a collection. People
who get changed between the low hedges
and the barbed wire at the dune's edge.

Playing cards fall on a towel in the sand,
provisions under cloths in a wicker basket,
a dug-in bottle from the distillery
where one of us has worked that day.
We run like everyone else to the sea

and back again, tap sand from shoes on the footpath,
embrace what's left out in every conversation
when we part and know we're desolate when
the driver of a tram calls out his stops
to the solitary passenger.

Translated into English by Paul Vincent