What Sparks Poetry is a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In Ecopoetry Now, invited poets highlight poetry’s integral role in sustaining our ecological imagination. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem and an excerpt from the essay
Daniela Danz
Translated from the German by Monika Cassel
Come wilderness into our homes
break the windows come
with your roots and your worms
spread yourself over our wishes
our waste-sorting systems our protheses
and outstanding payments
cover us with your rustling greenery 
and your spores cover us that we may
become green: green and reverent
green and manifest green and replaceable
come weather with your storms
and sweep the slates off the roofs come
with snow and hail smash
through the collective sleep                  
we are all enjoying in our beds
our worn rationalizations come ice
and form glaciers over the shadow banks
and our drive for liquidity
come through the cracks under the doors
you desert with your sands fill
our desolation up until it forms into a solid mass
rise up over the search-and-rescue teams
and our growth compulsion trickle into
the control panels of the missiles
and the missile defense systems into
the think tanks and the hearts of internet trolls
just leave the hedgehogs with their
snuffling so that it may calm us
come rising sea levels
up over our shorelines both the developed
and the undeveloped the homey
lowland areas wash 
jellyfish into our soup bowls
and ramshorn snails into our hair
as we swim in each other’s direction panicked
with our yearning for one another
because almost nothing is left because it’s all gone
and thoroughly soaked through with regrets
finger-pointing and tranquilizers
come earthquakes shatter the apartments
which we built on the foundations
of how we always did everything
come tremors fill the mine shafts
the end of work and 
the literature of redemption bury anger 
and affection and all manner of added values 
swallow up the memories come tremors 
hurry so that the bedrock covers us 
so we are covered with water desert weather 
and over everything that which covers all the wilderness



[Komm Wildnis in unsere Häuser]

Komm Wildnis in unsere Häuser
zerbrich die Fenster komm 
mit deinen Wurzeln und Würmern
überwuchere unsere Wünsche
Mülltrennungssysteme Prothesen
und Zahlungsverpflichtungen
wirf dein raschelndes Laub auf uns
und deine Sporen wirf dass wir
grün werden grün und andächtig
grün und greifbar grün und ersetzlich
komm Wetter mit deinen Stürmen
und feg die Ziegeln weg komm
mit Schnee und Hagel zerschlag
den einvernehmlichen Schlaf
den wir in unseren Betten führen
die müden Erklärungen komm Eis
vergletscher die Schattenbanken
und unseren Trieb zur Liquidität
komm Wüste mit deinem Sand
durch die Ritzen der Türen füll
unsere Ödnis an bis zur Starre
komm über die Bergungsteams
den Wachstumszwang riesele
in die Tastaturen die Raketen
und Raketenabwehrsysteme in
die Denkfabriken die Trollherzen
nur lass die Igel übrig mit ihrem 
Schnaufen um uns zu beruhigen
komm steigender Meeresspiegel
über unsere Uferzonen die bebauten
die unbebauten die heimatseligen
profitablen Flachlandzonen spüle
Quallen auf unsere Suppenteller
und Posthornschnecken ins Haar
wenn wir aufeinander zuschwimmen
panisch vor Sehnsucht nacheinander
weil so wenig bleibt weil alles hin ist
und gründlich aufgeweicht von Reue
Schuldzuweisungen Neuroleptika
kommt Erdstöße erschüttert unsere
Wohnungen die wir gegründet haben
auf allem was wir schon immer so
machen komm Beben und verschütte
die Schächte das Ende der Arbeit und
unsere rettenden Lektüren begrab Zorn
und Zuneigung und sämtliche Zugewinne
verschluck die Erinnerungen komm
Beben mach schnell das der Fels uns
bedeckt über uns Wasser Wüste Wetter
und die alles alles bedeckende Wildnis
from the journal POETRY
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Cover of Poetry Magazine, December 2023, where this translation was published
What Sparks Poetry:
Daniela Danz on [Come wilderness into our homes] 


"With our ever-increasing distance from nature, alongside our excessive extractive practices, the idea of wilderness has become a topos of longing; nevertheless, wilderness still harbors the potential to undo the cultural achievements that are the basis of human civilization. Prior to the Enlightenment, European thought regarded wilderness as a threat, if also a source of fascination; in the Enlightenment’s wake, wilderness was rebranded as an Edenic original condition."
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Black-and-white photograph of James Schuyler at work in the Chelsea Hotel
"Happy Belated Birthday to James Schuyler"

"'Past is past' does not equal 'Past / is past.' So much depends on that nonidentity. The latter instance of the phrase, while still melancholy, has a heartbeat: the silence at the break is felt, possesses its own duration, the form happens in the renewable present tense of reading, so that—to take a phrase from Jack Spicer—the 'thing language' of the poem overcomes its content, and the line no longer laments time that is simply lost."

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