Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and Wolf Wondratschek’s poem

Nighthawks – Edward Hopper

Nighthawks
After Edward Hopper’s Painting      – Wolf Wondratschek

 

It is night
and the city is deserted.
The lucky ones are at home,
or more likely
there are none left.

 

In Hopper’s painting, four people remain
the usual cast, so-to-speak:
the man behind the counter, two men and a woman.
Art lovers, you can stone me
but I know this situation pretty well.

 

Two men and one woman
as if this were mere chance.
You admire the painting’s composition
but what grabs me is the erotic pleasure
of complete emptiness.

 

They don’t say a word, and why should they?
Both of them smoking, but there is no smoke.
I bet she wrote him a letter.
whatever it said, he’s no longer the man
who’d read her letters twice.

 

The radio is broken.
The air conditioner hums.
I hear a police siren wail.