Messages

Hazy sun. November. My friends,
the crows, come back.
Letters fall from their feathers.
I pick them up, I gather them in,
I translate them for you: messages
from perishing forests, a premonition
of death.
              But we joggle on,
my friends and I, dragged along
in this wake of winter, again
as always over the city,
from the dumps beyond the silos
toward our roosts in the trees, as if
nothing at all were happening.

Copyright © 2002 Dagmar Nick
translated from the German by Jim Barnes All rights reserved
from Great River Review, 35
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission