tonight
my sparrows
let go
the snow
into fields of carnations swollen with anger.
tonight
the three popes
proclaim
the revolution
against teenage television.
seals smash
their heads
bloody
their heads
on the elevators
the paternoster elevators
which delays the holding of their conference.
tonight
my sister
the wind's bride
gives blood
for the cello
of the jericho desert
which prompts the trombones
to hold a protest meeting.
tonight
I hang your lips
like birdseed
outside my door
and observe
through the window
their death-struggle
with the she vulture.
tonight
let go
the snow
Source: Poetry (November 2007).
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This poem originally appeared in the November 2007 issue of Poetry magazine
Recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian poet, playwright, and novelist. Born to a Catholic-Viennese mother and a Jewish-Czech father in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Jelinek grew up in Vienna and lost many members of her family to the Holocaust.
Jelinek studied music intensively from an early age. She graduated from the Vienna Conservatory and studied theater and art history at the University of . . .
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Poems by Elfriede Jelinek