Unconnected Sentences [1]
Günter Kunert [2]
Translated by xia23
II
1
No leaps of thought take place during the period of waiting. Icarus [3] was not a bird. Man is a piece of paper, not a blank sheet. The expected chance always seems as a missed opportunity. Pots full of music overflow day by day. We constantly find ourselves in the field of a sharpened pencil.
2
One who waits for rescue is lost. A mechanic pump sucks off the blood which is actually not blood. Sense of each waiting is the waiting. Continuations follow one after another. Here families can cook nothing but make coffee.
3
On day the symbol of love comes to an end. A twilight is coming for everyone. The question is how we free ourselves from the smallness of our minimal existence and still stay alive? An answer has not yet arrived through the official channels. Don’t expect someone to move the iron bolt for your hands and foot and help you back down. Don’t wait an admission of error. Error is humane. Just as the humanity.
4
Awareness of the world always hurts. You best let it go. Today amputation takes place through a timekeeper. In the middle of calendar people can be wiped out. Everyday seems with the perfection of destruction. Your execution takes place without your notice. One speaks of his strangulation while one is being strangled. One flutters somewhat.
5
Fill the hourglass with a different content than sand. Sand always belongs to the gears. The rust of faith has already fully corroded its interior surface. Someone became permeable. You become brittle. I become porous. Everything in vain: the iron step of history leads then to the resignation.
[1]. p. 108. Unverbundene Sätze. Kontakt mit der Zeit. Dieter Stöpfgeshoff. Max Hueber Verlag. Germany, 1995.
[2]. Günter Kunert. 3/6/1929 – 9/21/2019. A German writer, based in East Berlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Kunert
[3]. Icarus. A character in Greek mythology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus
