3 x Fish
She sells fish
he doesn’t eat fish
so he soon has cats
he buys fish every day
so he can see her
she laughs when he asks
and goes with him out of pity
he has no words
he brings her home and it starts to rain
she tells him about her father
has needles in his skull and will not live
he thinks how good the rain is
he doesn’t have to tend his wife’s grave
She sells fish
he doesn’t eat fish
he has cats
he buys fish every day
so he can see her
she looks at him
he doesn’t notice
he asks her to eat with him
she has fish
he wants dessert before the soup
he brings her home and it starts to rain
she tells him about the children
she can’t have them
she has a wolf in her uterus
he thinks how good the rain is
scrapes the soup off his tongue
She sells fish
fish makes him vomit
the cats are dead
he buys fish every day
because she wants it
so she can see him
and when she asks him it starts to rain
he brings her home
she tells him about her husband
she has soft bones
as soft as fish bones
it’s not working for her
she lives above a carpenter’s shop and an old man
a carpenter’s shop would be good
Happiness
Life holds good hours too
I found fish eyes on the beach
I’ll stitch them onto my eyes
so I can see you underwater
and all the bright water snakes
I’ll catch from your beautiful skull
My mother is blind
Acne and rosacea ran hand in hand
across my tender skin
across untouched land
and burned it all at once
My father says
dear child, believe me now
the woman who takes you for her man
is herself ugly or blind
I don’t look in the mirror
I bear the torch on my face
I am lonely but not alone
Acne and rosacea will always be with me
Through thick and thin
When love winds blow weak
a man kisses even the fat woman
the soul lies deep in water
and the woman takes whatever she gets
You are young and I am kind
I have a soft double bed
every ship needs a harbour
why won’t you sleep beside me
I am not young
you are not kind
I am ugly and you are fat
but in a storm every harbour’s fine
and tomorrow you are rested
Knife
The dead sea in my flesh
has given birth to a harbour
Each day at the same hour
she docks to punish me
with a dying galley
The white-capped lark,
I’d kill for her to be with me,
yet her beak is like a griffin’s,
her talons sharp like shears
She drops anchor and will sing,
rips my little paper ship in half,
cuts it with fine blades,
screams herself to colder waters
It sinks, and no one sings with me
And that is why I fear knives
The little ship bleeds from its mast
into Grandmama’s chest
And when the sun shines on her at night
someone is there to cry with her
We drift cold on showers of eyes
hungry-happy in heavy barrels
she carves deep to devour me
And that is why I fear knives
And when the sun shines on me at night
there is no one
to cry with me
Addiction
She has never lied to me
I know she won’t leave me
she has woven a net around me
holds me fast with a thousand arms
She came when my voice broke
her cradle, my hand
I fall asleep with her at night
she is not related to me
she shakes me and lets me freeze
knows no sympathy or mercy
I compare her to wet animals
yet my addiction has no name
Good morning
He got out of bed
went to the bathroom
stared at the mirror for a long time
then cut himself open
and lay under a table to die
He was, the girl said,
far too old for her
Superstition
A hair falls from my eye
I wish
she were dead
and gone
Rejected
Her ashes twitch in my hand
I scatter them over the beautiful meadows
the late-night sun shines so pale
there my semen falls into the grass
united with her dust-bones
she is, after all, forever mine
Till Lindemann, born in 1963 in Leipzig, is best known as the singer and lyricist of the band Rammstein. The son of children’s author Werner Lindemann and cultural journalist Gitta Lindemann, he grew up in an artistically inclined environment in East Germany. Originally a competitive swimmer, he later completed vocational training as a wheelwright and basket weaver after attending a sports boarding school.
His published poetry collections to date include Messer (2005), In stillen Nächten (2013), Die Gedichte (2015), and 100 Gedichte (2020).
Photo © Bryan Adams
Teodora Gandeva is a Bulgarian literary translator with a BA in English and American Studies and an MA in Translation and Editing from Sofia University. Her translations have appeared in World Literature Today and Asymptote. She has worked as an interpreter and as a lecturer at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Geodesy in Sofia, and has contributed to the Bulgarian edition of L’Europeo.