The Translator’s Dream

      There are poppyseed cakes

      cooling on the window sills,

      there are horses swimming

      in the rich grass beyond.

      Towards evening, the sky

      grows more primrose,

      the mammulus clouds

      yellow as a girl’s hair:

      indoors, the new light bleaches

      all his spread-out papers blank.

      And a rain that begins

      as dashes turns into periods:

      “Es heißt ‘virga’ “, a stork

      clacks from the loft.

      Soon he can hear the roof

      whine under the grainy weight,

      see the land as far as the eye

      can see take on a black gleam.

      The postman knocks twice,

      slides under the door a postcard

      of Goethe’s spreading oak:

      “I waited and waited.

      Why did you not come?”

      in a hand he doesn’t know,

      and no return address.