Rainy Sun
- Rainy Sun
Ilma Rakusa, Francesca Bell, Rainy Sun, German translation, German to English, German poetry
In the Maltese Church the American kisses her dark groom and the priest watches before he grants the blessing why did the choice land on Prague why on this rainy day white veils belie nothing but the girl in the wheelchair wants to make it over the bridge before the lightning gets going no easy task between the tourists and street performers before the row of saints shrouded in spider webs Make way! I want to shout as the thunder crashes from giant gray clouds now they are already running the unprotected and the girl spins the wheels even faster as far as I know it is Dora from Gdansk already soaking wet Nepomuk didn’t want to fix it for her not today poor sparrow And Kafka so I read in the Franciscan Church reassures his relatives they can take their time with the woolen vest he has a Fur vest that will do Just an easy three stitches every day That was in February twenty-four before he retrieved the Lebensbestätigung from the police and Hausfrau Dr. Busse set out a rocking chair for him veranda sun it was supposed to warm him I ran toward it as it rained itself out sat at the place of the pendulum with an open view of the tower a waiter rubbed his upper lip a Russian spoke to his suitcase no flies the sky was clear [End Page 307]
ilma rakusa is a celebrated Swiss author, poet, translator (from Russian, Hungarian, French, and Serbo-Croatian into German), and journalist (Neue Züricher Zeitung, Die Zeit). She has translated, among others, the works of Anton Chekhov, Marguerite Duras, and Joseph Brodsky. Recent books include Mehr Meer. Erinnerungspassagen (winner of the Swiss Book Prize), Einsamkeit mit rollendem “r,” and Impressum: Langsames Licht.
francesca bell’s poems appear in many journals, including B O D Y, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. Her translations appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, Blue Lyra Review, Circumference, Poetry in Translation, and Laghoo. She is the Marin Poetry Center’s events coordinator and the poetry editor of River Styx.
