Karin Kroetlinger


The Possibility Of Being Led Astray


You could dedicate your life
to gathering wool, raise a monument
of something that once was sheep,

from myriads
of balls and bundles you could spin
one tremendous, if the surroundings would allow
enough room for such an undertaking. And once
hands and backbone grow weary, marvel
at your misguided creation decrying
its own incompletion, but pause
for a second, this is your one
Tower of Babel.

(Now why not unroll
the giant, encase your home or follow
the Trans-Siberian rails, only you care where
           and how you’ll end up-)

It could be of utmost ease
to illuminate the roads unpaved, if one could see
the light within as something firmer
than a friar’s lantern, heaving a sigh upon the marches
unseen and their pull unfelt. Let us yield the masteries
of life and death to things
such as cancer - and surrender, our patience
needs to find itself evidenced
upon the threshold (of belief
          or vindication).

One could dedicate his life
to draw a yarn from here to elsewhere, in hopes
something (anything) might either sever
or grasp them and start walking this
path now defined as his, something damp
in all his limbs and his hands
unceasingly clasped to the thread, not
neccessarily red as he grows immune
to the wonders off the track.



Karin Kroetlinger was born in Vienna/Austria/Europe in 1983, where she has spent most of her life. Her passion for writing is not much younger than her. She’s presently studying at the Vienna School of Arts, and tries to feed her profound interest in the subject with as many exhibitions and own creations as possible. She has only recently started to send out her work, while back in the days two of her poems got published in the German-speaking Print Anthology Nenoisiv. She mostly writes in German, but greatly enjoys the process of translation.

 
 
 
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