“requiem for a barber,” by Jan Wagner


on monday all should relaxation, so monday it would keep:
shade the mirrors, slip the perimeters of the shears away.

who will knead his fingers now, circling, till the cloud
of shampoo gathers over us; who will conduct his crowd

of bottles on the shelf, the oils and fragrances,
with small arms? who will blast the fantastic organs

of blow dryers and allow them to roar, allow them to swell?
of all of the tints, take the black; darken up the colourful.

now, magnificently, slowly as a tent, there are not any capes
to drape throughout the physique; now anybody who stops

is not going to know the place they’re going or what they’ll discover
however that the hair retains rising fuller, rising wild.

(Translated, from the German, by David Keplinger.)

That is drawn from “Wisp.”

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