Wie wir schlafen, auch gleich abbiegen müssen. Und die Dr.-Hossein-Fatemi-Straße sich aufrafft wieder Straße zu werden. Wie sie, einmal an der Luft, in ihrer Länge heißt und die Häuser nichts erwidern. Schau: Für ein paar Stellen fahren wir weiter. Hinauf in den Bezirk und hinunter zum Phlox. Selbst ohne Nachweis spätroter Sträucher kommt anderes Licht. Einhellig scheint die Zufälligkeit der geöffneten Fenster. Dr.-Hossein-Fatemis Vorsommer-Phlox und Zweispurigkeit. Sind noch flüchtig beim Leuchten, nach innen heller werdend, beinahe schon selber Wochentag. Und das nächstbeste Überholmanöver wird vordringlich ein sehr grüner Bruchteil zurückfallender Platanen.
The way we sleep, then immediately have to turn. And the Dr. Hossein Fatemi Street pulls itself together to be street again. How it, once on the air, is called in its length and doesn’t answer the houses anything. Look: For a couple of spots we keep driving. Up into the district and down to the phlox. Even without the proof of late-red bushes another light comes. The coincidence of the open windows shines unanimously. Dr. Hossein Fatemi’s pre-summer phlox and double-lanedness. Already fleeting in its radiance, becoming inwardly brighter, itself almost already weekday. And the next-best passing maneuver urgently becomes a very green fraction of falling back plane trees.
—
Poet: Farhad Showghi is a psychiatrist, poet and translator who resides in Hamburg, Germany. He is the author of the poetry collections Die große Entfernung, Ende des Stadtplans and In verbrachter Zeit. Ende des Stadtplans was published in English as End of the City Map (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop) by Burning Deck Press and was subsequently shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award for 2015.
Translator: Harry Roddy received his MFA in Poetry and Poetry Translation from Drew University. His translations of German poetry have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, No Man’s Land and Sakura Review. He lives in Mobile with his family, where he is Associate Professor of German at the University of South Alabama.