Andrea Durlacher Translated by Anna Rosenwong

It’s something no one regrets.

Menacing rituals arrive like an avalanche

and social norms.

Their arrival scares off any afternoon idle.

Shut the doors.

We’re cast down defeated in moonlight.

In turn

the reckoning.

*

I hope the moon

doesn’t draw us toward violent times.

I was never violent

and I won’t turn violent now.

As for you I love you moonless

in the sin of your own courage.

*

The letters of each syllable sink

in my room monsters surge back to life from a word.

Isolated birds

in scattered cages.

I remain.

I regard my thoughts.

Image: Eloisa Ballivian