[Meister’s] enviable combination of lyrical talent and existential preoccupation … is not a peaceful, divine perception but rather a distillation of despair … derangement seems almost justified. Will Stone, The Times Literary Supplement

Ernst Meister’s brief, afflicted poems attend to the writer’s lifelong obsessions with being and mortality. First published in 1976 and appearing for the first time in English in its entirety, it is a collection equal parts philosophical rigor and lived experience.

We had a face-off in the light. Dust floated around us, tenderly.

Ernst Meister (1911 1979) was posthumously awarded the most prestigious award for German literature, the Georg Buchner Prize.