You sleep | A poem by Gerhard Falkner, 1996

Egon Schiele, Seated Boy, 1910

You sleep and lie next to your hair
your white leg is propped up
and I, on whom it rests, I am the world
made glum by your sleep, am the danger
that keeps your dream quietly in suspense.

You sleep and lie next to your hair
I embedded a whisper in your ear
it speaks to you, that I was the evening
the drunkenness, the quivering in the pessary
it speaks to you the speech that rescues me

Gerhard Falkner, You sleep, 1996
tr. Donna Stonecipher