Sven Kretzschmar
Sven Kretzschmar hails from County Saarland, Germany. His poetry has been published widely in Europe and overseas, among other outlets with Poetry Jukebox in Belfast, in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019), Poets Meet Politics (Hungry Hill Writing, 2020) Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Voices 2020 (Cold River Press, 2020), Voices 2021 (Cold River Press, 2021) and 100 Words of Solitude (Rare Swan Press, 2021), in The Irish Times, Das Gedicht, Loch Raven Review, The Bangor Literary Journal, Studi Irelandesi, Culture Matters, South Florida Poetry Journal, and on RTÉ Radio. Sven was awarded 1st prize in the ‘Creating a Buzz in Strokestown’ competition in 2018, 2nd place at the Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award 2022, and he was shortlisted for the Allingham Poetry Award 2019, the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2019 and the Saolta Arts Annual Poetry Competition 2020, special mention in the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2020.
See more at: https://trackking.wordpress.com/ and Instagram: @sven_kretzschmar_poetry.
Where field and forest meet
Cutting across country
This sugared cartway hides a coating of thick ice,fat flakes press down on our shoulders. There is morethan what we can see in the storm. Lopsidedbushes devoid of green, the uneven field
trailed with snow. A heavy sky, defying and serious,you try to stare down or at least away from,but it is far too noisy. Too far away. Tristesseout of multifarious spits in acres
escorting our boots. I am unsurewe are actually sensing it. Sometimesa feeling repeats the end, sometimes interruptswhatever. Steps surrounded by the exquisiteness
of winter. You cannot unhear the echobeating out my apprehension: Our love is vengeance,our love is revenge, our loves is a reckoner.Every flake a freezed-on heartbeat.
trailed with snow. A heavy sky, defying and serious,you try to stare down or at least away from,but it is far too noisy. Too far away. Tristesseout of multifarious spits in acres
escorting our boots. I am unsurewe are actually sensing it. Sometimesa feeling repeats the end, sometimes interruptswhatever. Steps surrounded by the exquisiteness
of winter. You cannot unhear the echobeating out my apprehension: Our love is vengeance,our love is revenge, our loves is a reckoner.Every flake a freezed-on heartbeat.
A map of water
A map of water
Recognize in frosty air the wingbeat of the common kestreland on a mud-smeared trail a drop-crested leaf – fallen, rotting. A map of water. A track chart. For outcastsliving amidst dried-out puddles and desolate wells. Childsoldiers with a gun on their temples beforethe commanding thugger lets it slip into their hands.Refugees with no handful of rice for a week,conceiving a way they cannot conjure up. A routethrough pricking sand or Mediterranean straitswhere rubber dinghies get pushed backinto the open sea. A wet crown of thorns. A mapof water. Its nervures like rivers to no reservoirs,cold water ways drowning in ill-lit naught.
Between tea and supper
Eve of your birthday
(after Desmond O’Grady)
Tomorrow, love, you will wake in a neighbouring villageone forest away, and I imagine the air white with fogand moist as a shower door when you combyour heavy maroon hair and the dogs start whining
for another unleashed walk. Buses cradlewaiting in the bus bay, we in our different homes.An ageless star attending the crescent over the brambly hillsidesettled between houses, paddocks, old mines and steel mills.
Tomorrow who will lead you to the floor? All day the joyof paws and a son, and in the traditional way,parents and their partners, grand-parents and stepsiblings.Tonight, my memory conjures your birthdays
you used to spend in different company, year after lonely-loving year,at hospitable tables to drink and dine – mostly wine – those student-life times. The innocent play that woosand wins all hearts to love and joy in life together.
Whose heart do you make tremble tomorrow?Your personal day, you said, I’d be the only manto always remember, and still we never dancedtogether in love. So much time unlived together
and sauntering past paddocks I wear a willow flower daily.Here, everything that reminds me of you goes through melike a dog bite. My chances died when you renounced meafter our last Old Town summer – it was a great adventure
and it did cost my future. My songwriter stepsnow shuffle by day after solitary day, this scribble on the pageis my dance alone with you in reverie. Midnight.The gutter in my cobble-stoned chest flushes.
I love a ghost. An idea that has ceased existing.
Tomorrow, love, you will wake in a neighbouring villageone forest away, and I imagine the air white with fogand moist as a shower door when you combyour heavy maroon hair and the dogs start whining
for another unleashed walk. Buses cradlewaiting in the bus bay, we in our different homes.An ageless star attending the crescent over the brambly hillsidesettled between houses, paddocks, old mines and steel mills.
Tomorrow who will lead you to the floor? All day the joyof paws and a son, and in the traditional way,parents and their partners, grand-parents and stepsiblings.Tonight, my memory conjures your birthdays
you used to spend in different company, year after lonely-loving year,at hospitable tables to drink and dine – mostly wine – those student-life times. The innocent play that woosand wins all hearts to love and joy in life together.
Whose heart do you make tremble tomorrow?Your personal day, you said, I’d be the only manto always remember, and still we never dancedtogether in love. So much time unlived together
and sauntering past paddocks I wear a willow flower daily.Here, everything that reminds me of you goes through melike a dog bite. My chances died when you renounced meafter our last Old Town summer – it was a great adventure
and it did cost my future. My songwriter stepsnow shuffle by day after solitary day, this scribble on the pageis my dance alone with you in reverie. Midnight.The gutter in my cobble-stoned chest flushes.
I love a ghost. An idea that has ceased existing.
Sand in my mouth
Brittleness
To log the old tree was past timewhen winter was fadingout early this year.Buds began to show on twigsleading down to limbs friableand rotten – the entire trunkshot through down to the rootsbelow the sod with a soft blacklysomething that used to be wood.
Part of the tree might live onin turnery already formingin my father’s mind and workshop.What’s left only spared till the nextingle or until micro-organisms and compost createthe ground for a new plant.
That weekend my grandmotherwas speaking of dying again.
Part of the tree might live onin turnery already formingin my father’s mind and workshop.What’s left only spared till the nextingle or until micro-organisms and compost createthe ground for a new plant.
That weekend my grandmotherwas speaking of dying again.
Wave Form
Off my mind (Seeing things)*
(after William Wall)
I can see the last snowon the high peaks.We saw snowfall on these narrows,falling on the beach and whitening,whitening above the waterline,falling on the olive groves and roofs,whitening the red tiles.
Soon the snow will have gone,melted; and I will go too,back out into the life that left meunbalanced. Uneven – unlike the waterline; left me falling in olive grovescrying and trembling for reasonsbeyond me. Beyond the life that left me.
Should they see me return hereI’ll be a saunterer on the high peakswho has fallen for these narrows,olive groves and waterline.And the red tiles under which,gradually, dark days became lighter,brightened with snow that won’t go
off my mind. *Based on extracts from William Wall’s short story collection ‘Hearing Voices / Seeing Things’.
I can see the last snowon the high peaks.We saw snowfall on these narrows,falling on the beach and whitening,whitening above the waterline,falling on the olive groves and roofs,whitening the red tiles.
Soon the snow will have gone,melted; and I will go too,back out into the life that left meunbalanced. Uneven – unlike the waterline; left me falling in olive grovescrying and trembling for reasonsbeyond me. Beyond the life that left me.
Should they see me return hereI’ll be a saunterer on the high peakswho has fallen for these narrows,olive groves and waterline.And the red tiles under which,gradually, dark days became lighter,brightened with snow that won’t go
off my mind. *Based on extracts from William Wall’s short story collection ‘Hearing Voices / Seeing Things’.
