[Lift your quill] Poem by Christian Lehnert

Lift your quill to your lips: is it moving? Are there thermals
wafting or are you breathing, ever more reticent over the shimmering

gorge? Nests of withered grass, nests of
softened fish bones - the circling of the eagles, for hours

without wingbeat, was far from your mind. Standing, you held
fast on the ridge, fidgeting with your arms:

was there a reason? Was it tenable, the fissure in which
slopes and brain stole up on each other, between salt seams,

the temporal licking of water, foreseen weight-
lessness in the marrow? Left behind upright, the joints

were whispering routes, apotropaic sounds: there is a
path, it leads into the deep, but in the deep it vanishes.

Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser & Gabriel Rosenstock