an English translation of the German poem sent in by Maximilan Kleibeler

They fly up and down, to and fro,
Go all over the world.

Now light, now dark, now light, now heavy,
And sometimes on a lake of colour.

Now we see them as tigers, now as dragons,
And also sometimes soaring up
From a person’s throat.

Sometimes they pull themselves apart, sometimes as beautiful as poetry;
Sometimes they cast spells, like magic.

You can love them, you can’t hate them,
One thing is certain, you can’t do without them.

You observe that they are immortal, like it or not;
So they belong to life, as light does.

© Debra Wetherell.