absintheAbsinthe: World Literature in Translation2377-345617455_senocak-cookwilliamson.pdf10.3998/absinthe.1745Poetryfield tripŞenocakZaferzafer.senocak@journal.comCook WilliamsonVeronicaveronica.cook.williamson@journal.com3011202127Through German: Contemporary Literature in TranslationCC BY-NC-ND 4.0the first hour begins before the blank blackboardan indefinite article settles on the hatstand by the doorwhich head flies towards usyou grow up, suddenlyis the cross on the wall empty the one on which Jesus hung for yearshe must have been removed overnightor have taken an express train to Athens with a through coach to the Adriaticjust like the whole class did on a bitterly cold morning in early summerin our pointless summer coats we stood on the hill of the Acropolis two nights laterand clawed Greek skills out of each other’s eyesnone of us made it to Peloponnesbut to Hades in two nightsthe history teacher did not want to be called Orpheushis recollection did not reach that faryet neither his name nor his face could concealhis kinship to an Anatolian slaveit could have been worse for himwe had a wide range of names we traded with great élanthey leapt into the air and snapped indiscriminately like caged wild animalsgrade eleven A lined up amounts to a cagenobody arrived at the idea of releasethe black panther gets in Orpheus’ wayand rewrites historyyou don’t need memory for thatthe fragment of a dream and a life begun just yesterday are enoughto tell a story1the history teacher points to the blackboard on which the futurechanges into physicsthe physicist turns around he barely wants to name his formulathe one that entitles him to displace the history teacherverse appears on the boarda text to sing along towe intone it and the teacher covers his earseven though he is praised for his deafnesshysterically he shouts at us we remain lyricalthe day transforms into a life’s historyany life it is not yet a discipline we will never be oldto whom after all can you entrust your life at seventeenI envy the half-orphans who grow up with the motherthe smell of feminine hands across the face at all timesthen the flesh gets its money’s worthI imagine that biology is always feminineand geography mixed-gender hybridin competition with algebra a small crookedweeping willow in the schoolyard unimaginable what went on here back thenthirty-one years subtracted fromnineteen hundred seventy-fivethe penal colony was housed here and the discipline at the timegeologyexhumations so no one can hide under his ancestors’ gravestonea starry sky tipped into the open pit Peace Plazatheir tongues fall out of the stones when you tip them oversilence is cementthe history teacher practices forgetting with uswho would not call him Orpheuswe knit summer coats out of transparent yarnwhat risk we take in geographyfor one day for the fraction of one daywe want to dig dig dig a tunnelheading home a night train full of eleventh grade in an expedition comawe crossed under state borders fell overboardwere reborn through open windowsin the wind’s fluttering howlthen the train stoppedsilence on commandbleary-eyed in lockstepin the baggage fake marble souvenirssplintered footprints from some coastthere we stood in rank and filelittle green men wanted to see our passportsthey were our own watchingover the country that was left for us
Geschichte in German could be translated as story or history.