Settlement

Into pasture land I came

just after night had fallen,

smelling the scars in the meadows

and the wind before it rose.

Love no longer grazed,

and the bells had faded away

and the sheaves stood bent and ragged.

A horn had been stuck in the earth,

stubbornly by the herd’s leader, 

rammed into the darkness.

I drew it from the earth,

I lifted it to the sky

with all my might.

Wanting to fill this land

completely with music,

I blew the horn, 

resolved in the rising wind

to live among the swaying grasses

of every true origin!

Ingeborg Bachmann (from Darkness Spoken, trans. Peter Filkins)