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.
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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