poem of a house Poem by Ulrike Almut Sandig

a little group of researchers from
Hearken and Aachen stubbornly claim that once
there was something that looked like a great and
impossibly beautiful, a singing house with two different-
sized horns instead of a roof and, spanning from gable to
gable, its many wafer-thin walls, like otherwise only
circus tents have. oh absolute amateurs! those researchers
from Hearken and Aachen are laughed out of court. but
we believe them and scour their papers for what is known
of this house, which is this: that when you stroked it, the
doors would creak softly. that when you went in, its three-
hundred and fifty windows would begin to hum. and that
when you wandered inside, moving pictures would light
up the dark of the walls, so you could scarcely believe
your own eyes. that's what it said in all the reports. post
scriptum it should be noted that the researchers from
Hearken and Aachen called it a house. on this point, they
were sadly mistaken. in truth it was the poem of a house.