Kant is in the Petrol
April is National Poetry Month in the States, where you're encouraged to write something everyday. Carrie Etter challenged her readers to join her. I did. Here's a work in progress:
Elke Erb
Why can’t I simply be simpler? Oh Elke! To create your city-states you must notice the presidents, their wives reading Kant to the children; so carefree on the narrow pavements, so vulnerable when so young – watch how the cars eye them. Kant. All the girls should know him. His rules are our rules, they’re the clothes we wear – outside would you go naked, carrying those tired jugs, those hairy thighs….
And those cars there: so tempting that stray foot, those wandering arms. But its Kant you see, strolling along; even cars respect him – I hear he goes into the petrol…
You walk around the block, the same routine Monday to Friday, with Immanuel on your arm; he’s quite attractive, I gather, and he paints his abstractions with such charming colours. An artist in tone and form; a close friend of Braque some say, musicians too and philosophers.
Elke Erb is a German poet, or perhaps I should say an East German poet, whose Mountains in Berlin is a series of absurdist prose poems. This poem refers to My Gallows, where she goes all over the country rather than describe a simple scene: a man hanging on a hillside while a child plays at the bottom of the hill. Wondering why she wasn't more direct she writes Why can't I simply be simpler?
Elke Erb
Why can’t I simply be simpler? Oh Elke! To create your city-states you must notice the presidents, their wives reading Kant to the children; so carefree on the narrow pavements, so vulnerable when so young – watch how the cars eye them. Kant. All the girls should know him. His rules are our rules, they’re the clothes we wear – outside would you go naked, carrying those tired jugs, those hairy thighs….
And those cars there: so tempting that stray foot, those wandering arms. But its Kant you see, strolling along; even cars respect him – I hear he goes into the petrol…
You walk around the block, the same routine Monday to Friday, with Immanuel on your arm; he’s quite attractive, I gather, and he paints his abstractions with such charming colours. An artist in tone and form; a close friend of Braque some say, musicians too and philosophers.
Elke Erb is a German poet, or perhaps I should say an East German poet, whose Mountains in Berlin is a series of absurdist prose poems. This poem refers to My Gallows, where she goes all over the country rather than describe a simple scene: a man hanging on a hillside while a child plays at the bottom of the hill. Wondering why she wasn't more direct she writes Why can't I simply be simpler?
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