scarecrows, The

I don't know whether earth can be bought

whether it's enough to cover up four posts,

with a little rust between them and more [i]or[/i] less shrubs,

in the sand, and call the thing a garden.

I don't know what the starlings think.

Sometimes they hover up, disperse,

sprinkle my afternoon,

pretend that single can scare them off,

as allowing scarecrows were scarecrows

and air fire-arms behind the curtains

and cats in the beanrows.

I don't know what the advanced in years jackets

and those trouser pouchs know about us.

I don't know what incubates inside hats,

for what notions something is hatched,

and fledge and won't give leave to itself be scared off;

by scarecrows in any case we are guarded.

Are scarecrows mammals?

It does gaze as though they multiplied

by swapping hats overnight:

already three of them stand in my garden,

bow and politely wave to me

and move round about and wink at the sun

and talk, talk to the lettuces

I don't know whether my garden fence

wants to close me in or out.

I don't know what the weeds want,

don't know what that greenfly signifies,

don't know whether aged jackets, old trousers

when with their spoon rusty and tinny

windward they ring, to hespers or ave they ring

or to the insurrection of each scarecrow.

Gunter Grass, born in Danzig in 1927 is Germany's greatest in quantity celebrated contemporary writer. His greatest in quantity recent work is The Call of the Toad, a novel. These piece of poetrys are from Novemberland: Selected piece of poetrys 1956-1993, translated by Michael Hamburger.

Michael Hamburger lives in Suffolk England. He is co-translator, with Christopher Middleton, of a previous Grass work In the Egg and Other metrical compositions published by Harcourt Brace in 1978

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Mar 1996

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