Step by Step · Schritt auf Schritt

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"A sensual ontology unfolds in Andreas Hutt's verse, a poetic voice that gives form to what would otherwise remain intangible: impressions of landscapes, city scenes, art and writing are presented in images in which space is always present, hinting at something unsayable and leading the reader through observation of the seemingly quotidian, the seemingly banal, to a deeper insight into the world that surrounds us."

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Poems of the Baltic pleasingly evocative; poems of art response that inspire and intrigue

Step by Step

pp. 6-8, 43, 45, 48

ANDREAS

HUTT

STEP

BY

STEP

Step by Step

Highlights

Prison: weather worn pallets, chipped

corridors, iron bars and rust.

Up stairs, along hallways,

the dark fingerprint of coldness.

Even locked away, a human being has 

a face, hands, numbly weaves their threads.

Where streets draw right angles,

accustom themselves to houses of apricot and sky blue wood.

On the beach promenade concrete cast 

pairs from the previous century.

Porsches that tailgate the grand hotel,

Minutes accelerate, decelerate.

In the shade of the park dice rolled,

full grown thoughts.

A day in sweat,

hungry through sooted side streets.

Between all the women in worn out coats,

grandmothers, I feel old, torn paper.

Let yourself be led by the illusion,

of being just a pedestrian, not knowing,

which way back to the old town

is in the most shade. Memories,

when sitting sated on an evening roof terrace, 

breathing air from the courtyard out back.

Ten Monologues 

I

This is what I am on cold days: lying on velvet,

head propped in my arms,

full of questions, while your afterglow vanishes.

Today only rouge makes me happy, 

tomorrow, perhaps sleep.

I would never say to you, 

which ways I would surely like to go,

never spend too long searching for a suitable 

foundation. Forget me,

like you forget the scent of hours.

III

Am I too pretty to have permission,

to embody the colour red?

Who talks about big mirrors today?

Little ones too can show the spot

at the back of the mind

the baptismal water failed to reach.

I look into my eyes, at lips,

how everything tips into focus,

without me having to go through

fire and brimstone

when the time comes.

VI

No one will take Kasperl from me.

He belongs to me like the braces,

the ones from back home, our house.

Some say I have a girl’s pout. That

my eyes were too cheeky even at birth,

too brown.

Yet all I am trying to do is stare

down the alien lime of the wall.

I want to cradle the puppet gently in my arms,

I know that I am succeeding.

© Andreas Hutt 2021, translation Bryn Roberts 2022