JÜLICH - Grevenbroich - Erkelenz Poem by Marion Poschmann

a triangle of energy, colourless and flat when seen
from the air, spread out across the ground. contrasting
with it alarmingly blue attributes of labour, the open air sky,
the overalls, the lakes to come (the biggest in Europe).

spreaders shoving the soil aside. the inalienable,
the emptiness, yawning with boredom. we stood at the edge
of destroyed acres, of the division of powers
into bulldozers and belts (the biggest in the world).

mighty coal seams once more in a pose of sovereignty:
what was forest in the tertiary standing black and silent.

in a state of alert we, the briefly glinted-in sediments
of the earth's history, we breathed dust, ate curtains of dust
still hanging inside nailed-up windows in the ghost villages,
we wandered slowly along the edge where the land fell away

like in relocated cemeteries. white mist rising
from new gullies, sprinkling appeasement - moon landscape
leaving us speechless. the veiled hole only half
visible, while we ourselves were undergoing coalification,

under the great day-to-day pressure silent chambers full of black
sun, easy to burn up, forest concentrate.

Translation Catherine Hales