MICHAEL KRÜGER was born in Wittgendorf, Germany, in 1943, and spent his youth and college years in West Berlin. He now lives in Munich, running the Carl Hanser publishing house. He and Klaus Wagenbach, in 1968, founded the literary annual Tintenfisch. He is editor of the periodical Akzente, the first outlet for a great many promising authors. His first collected poems, Reginapoly, appeared in 1976, and he has continued publishing ever since. His work has been translated into many languages.
The pomes published here first appear in English translation in Sirena: Poetry, Art, and Criticism 2009:2 (Johns Hopkins UP), edited by Jorge R. G. Sagastume, the editor of The Pasticheur. All translation into English were done by Eva Bourke.
Marx Speaks
Sometimes when it clears up in the west
I watch the glittering streams of money
foam and rise over their banks
and flood the hitherto parched land.
I am amused by the dictatorship of blather
which pays off as a theory of society
if I can believe the news from below. I am well.
Sometimes I see God. He looks relaxed.
We talk about metaphysical questions,
not without humor and surprisingly
well-versed in dialectics.
Recently he asked me for the edition
of my Collected Works because, he claimed,
he couldn’t find them anywhere.
It’s not that I want to believe in it, he said,
nevertheless it can’t do any harm.
I gave him my personal copy,
the last of the blue edition, plus commentaries.
Actually he is more well-read than I had thought,
theology bores him, he throws a spanner
into the works of deconstruction,
psychoanalysis is nonsense, he thinks
and won’t entertain it. His prejudices are amazing.
For example he forgives Nietzsche even
his most foolish phrases, Hegel, on the other hand
he can’t stand. Due to his shyness
he never talks about his project. Please,
he said recently, after a long look
at the earth, please be prepared.
A history of painting
I read a history of painting
from the beginnings until today.
A history of white lambs
before the ray strikes them.
A history of small winged angels
and the virginal lawn
strewn with daisies.
A history of fabrics
and the assertiveness of gold.
A history of the most delicate tears
on pale faces.
A history of rounded foreheads
and hollow cheeks.
A history of water
and how to paint it.
A history of schools, styles,
of the battle for truth.
A history of violence,
of treachery and spite,
of disloyalty and betrayal,
of broken oaths, of uprisings
and never-ending slaughters.
In the footnotes I also read
a history of shame,
a complex history of consolation.
All in all a beautiful history,
the history of painting
and not only for the eyes.
In his epilogue the author explained
ponderously that what we saw
was merely colour performing different tasks.
He had forgotten the poison
that was mixed with it,
the poison for the eyes.
