The birds announce spring. I often wonder how they perceive the change in climate. I think I know that they don’t think about their lives in our human sense. They probably always try to make the best of a situation and when it gets more and more uncomfortable and they can’t escape, they just accept it, suffer hunger, thirst, heat, cold and die from it. They don’t know it’s because of us.
Behind the fence, a man is carrying a very long beam across the property. He has a bright orange cap on his head. He looks at me briefly without curiosity, staggers down the slope with his log, puts it down, comes back and gets the next one. Here was a carpenter’s shop. Beams are still stored under the roof of the half-ruined shed. The man is old, the beams seem too heavy for him, he has to shoulder them exactly in the middle so that he can balance them across the terrain.
The roof of the shed is hanging off one corner, causing a few roof tiles to fall off. I’m sitting under the old gantry crane that leads across the street to the neighboring property.
A remnant, large and unnoticed. The past does not exist, only the present has an existence. But how long does it exist?
By the time you read this, the moment I am writing this will have long since passed. My presence overlaps with yours.
The man in the orange cap has disappeared. Four geese have just appeared in his place. They have bright orange beaks and feet. Three graze and one stands guard. The new building is on the other side of the street. A dark gray and white monolithic implant, untouched by time. Between these opposites runs the street, on which a car drives up or down sporadically. Each of these represents a potential threat for the guarding goose, which it counters heroically in an attacking posture. The fact that every car has driven past her and her comrades doesn’t seem to convince her.
Further down the street I see the synagogue. She has a nice new roof. The weathered facade is directly on the street. This house is oddly beautiful.
From here I see the roof of Hegenheim Castle for the first time, some distance behind the synagogue. Also behind the derelict shed I now notice a roof that is very similar to that of the synagogue and the castle. A group of house roofs distinguishes itself in my perception. Those large roofs with the old tiles, the ridge of which often sags slightly, like the backs of cows in the pasture, the sloping roof of which flattens out slightly at the bottom and protrudes from the body. A herd of primal houses reveal themselves.
(Mimi von Moss)
In the middle of the wood seat Ig
uf em stalk of n’em felled holder tree
around my ume ligge d’raste of nere old säägi now home to a couple of geissli
rostigi staalpfyler
sluggish no always ä loadkraan to the loading of whole Böim
the view goes from roof to roof
sägi, synagogue and castle
i dr färni greets Ötlige from the edge of the Black Forest
i dr mitti from the picture
it stoht huus with a flat roof
wyss and gray with much gloomy pale
I close my eyes
and see dr Panzerchrüzer Potjemkin in front of me…
(Victor Saudan)
Assis au milieu du taillis sur le tronc d’un
sureau coupe
autour de moi étalées
les restes d’une ancienne scierie
lieu de vie désormais d’un troupeau de chèvres
des poteaux d’acier rouillés portent toujours une vieille grue à transporter des arbres entiers
le regard passe d’un toit à l’autre
scierie, synagogue, château
de très loin Oetlingen salue du bord de la Forêt-Noire
au milieu du tableau
se dresse une maison à toit plat
blanche et en grise avec beaucoup de ferraille trouée
mes yeux se ferment il me vient à l’idée
le cuirassé Potemkine.
(Victor Saudan)
scerie
I speak Alsatian
and say it simply not z luut
introduce dr me heerts
(Martin Burr)