Martin Kratz’s first pamphlet, A Skeleton’s Progress (Poetry Salzburg), was published in 2018. He is co-editor of Mount London (Penned in the Margins, 2014), a book that explores hills and other elevations in the capital. He translates from the German including, most recently, the poetry of Berthold Brecht and Nelly Sachs.
Events
On City Rivers
Skeleton Man, you know
a skeleton when you see one.
And this city has rivers for bones.
Some rise out from under
its skin of road and railway line
in fractured glimpses: hemmed
into a short corner, brick-locked
into their courses.
Others, Skeleton Man,
are buried deep, surface
only in the names of streets.
If one broke,
you wonder, how would we know,
other than too late?
First published in A Skeleton’s Progress, Poetry Salzburg, (2018)