Tuesday 23 August 2016

Sarah Kirsch: Cat Lives



Poets love cats of course
The gentle free who cannot be controlled
Who sleep and dream November rain away
On silk chairs or in rags speak back
Without saying a word shake themselves
And get on with their lives
Behind the hunter’s fence
While his possessed neighbours
Are still noting down number plates
The one being observed in his four walls
Has long left the borders behind.


 
Tr. Anne Stokes. From Cat Lives (Katzenleben) (1984). Kirsch (1935-2013) spent much of her life in East Germany but in 1977 emigrated to the West. She was a serious cat-lover. Her Cold War life explains the reference to the “possessed neighbours”; the cat of course is the poet.

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