The Fly from Miroslav Holub

As with Miroslav Holub's poem The Door (see below) this is another one of P-i-R's Czech-to-German-to-English translations. The system brings a certain je ne sais quoi.

The Fly

She sat on a willow stem,
observing
a part of the battle of Crecy,
the roars,
the gasps,
the groans,
the trampling and falling.

During the fourteenth attack
of the French cavalry
she mated
with a brown-eyed male fly
from Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs together
on a slit-open horse
and pondered
on the immortality of flies.

Relieved she settled
on the blue tongue
of the Duke of Clairvaux.

As silence settled
and the whispers of decay
spread
and only
a few arms and legs
twitched under the beech trees,

she began to lay her eggs
on the one eye
of Johann Uhr,
the King's Armourer.

And there she was pecked off
by a swift
in flight
from the flames of Estrees

-----
gw 2009