The sorcerer of the punctuation marks and the letters of the alphabet, The dash off unprintable words The trawl stole for the magical catch The rhyme and contrary ideas. We are clumsy, we are hapless, Go and fall all over Russia... Others will come still more lyrically, But those won’t be we, but the others. Racing driver, barge hawler and cowboy, Contempt smooth surfaces of the plateau, In the world of feasible phantasmagoria You conduct as the first the bunch behind you! You moan personally of these bitter ones, The best lines in the world! Which ones? - Others will come, still more lyrically, But those won’t be we, but others. There will come meticulous ones "not like others", They are good, the verses are bad.
© Elisabeth Jelinek. Translation, 2018