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Die Schreibblockade. Sonnet VI

Author: 
Eugene Ostashevsky

Камень. Камены.

A swan engages in self-reflection.

The gardens of Leto do not commemorate Niobe.

Riven, the vernal ice drifts on the Never River.

Eva my daughter has a fever. Her face looks thinner.

She ate bread and butter my daughter.

She wants me to lie next to her, so that she may grab onto the sides of my head

and drift off to sleep.

Vater. Water.

She wakes up, goes to peepee. I hold her over the bowl.

I try to wrap her in a bathrobe. No, I’m schwitzing. I do not need it.

I’m not cold, I’m wet.

She sneezes, a Popel hanging out of her nose. Der Popel, but die Pappel.

Ich sah meine Pappel, and so on.

She “reads” Asterix and is delighted when I tell her that Ave is Eva

spelled backwards.

Papa, says Eva holding a brownish apple, schmeiss this weg. I schmeiss it weg.

We live in Berlin.

 

Part of 'In the Beginning of Covid-19', a series of poems curated by Jason Dodge in 2020