the mountains keep the earth in balance [/ lineate]
and the seas disregard · above me was a slab of rock [/ lineate]
which could easily move to the side · so breaks [/ lineate]
and is a wave reflected · smooth [/ lineate]
hanging and a swallow’s nest · at the corners freezes [/ lineate]
the breath wind and the always this over whopping [/ lineate ]
mouthful fear which then only lose [/ lineate]
in go · boulders and rubble · lunch a bowl [/ lineate]
in the rockfalls fade · the heap eroded [/ lineate]
Layer by layer, as if the narrow [/ lineate]
the time removed from her · it arranges the space [/ lineate]
the getreckte fingers to arm its diagonal [/ lineate]
is to me as surely live · a riser at the hem [/ lineate]
steeper, he was the more I step in front of me [/ lineate]
eyes on the road oriented · a Larch tree [/ lineate]
horizontally in the air · there was no turning back [/ lineate]
at each occurs I reached into a shadow [/ lineate]
to me the sun reproached · he was slow hard [/ lineate]
in the light as he wanted to repay his body to me [/ lineate]
from the merely hands and toes on the rock [/ lineate]
stapled
rich · the day on the grass mats [/ lineate]
above tore gaps in the size of a fontanells [/ lineate]
he sought halt in stone in the other face [/ lineate]
of death · and he had the clarity of a cold quells [/ lineate]
winter 1311 [/ lineate]
~ Raoul Schrott
Born in 1964 Brought up in Tunis and Tyrol,  Raoul Schrott essayist writes poetry and fiction, and is a prolific translator and. His translation of the Iliad, together with ‘Homer’s home’, a monograph challenging orthodox views of Homer’s cultural background, Appeared in 2008. Much of his work reflects a keen interest in science, ‘brain and Poem’ (2011), For Example, co-authored with the neurologist Arthur Jacobs, offering a ‘neuropoetical’ study of the activity of the brain in writing and reading poetry.
Iain Galbraith has won the John Dryden Translation Prize and the Stephen Spender Prize, as well as publishing his own poems. He is the editor of five poetry anthologies, while his recent translated books include A selection of WG Sebald’s poetry, ‘Across the Land and the Water’ (2011), John Burnside’s selected poems in German, ‘Essay on the light’ (2011) , and Jan Wagner’s ‘Self-portrait with a Swarm of Bees’ (2015). He lives in Wiesbaden, Germany, and teaches poetry translation at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna.
The original version of this poem First Appeared in Raoul Schrott’s collection ‘tropical’ and is republished here with kind permission from Hanser Verlag.
