The challenge the poet sets for himself is to write religious poetry without being overt (we are, after all, dealing with a deus absconditus) nor sentimental. I feel he succeeds in this.
His formal technique is equally strict. He uses traditional forms, rhyme, and meter.
German is not my mother-tongue, and I found these poems difficult to understand; in aggregate, however, they took on more sense. The clue is in the jacket flap: the poet, who is also a theologian, strives for implicit pneumatology. The words “Wind” and “Hauch” recur. Other images of God frequently appear as well; not directly, however, but in their contrasting effect (“Schatten,” “Asch”).
Another key term is “Wort,” with its reminiscence of the pre-incarnate divine (John 1) and its relation to breath/spirit. Here is a particularly striking example, from the poem “Licht in Blättern, fliederfarben, rot” (p. 37):
Gesagt ist Staub, doch aus der andern Richtung,
woher die Sonne glänzt, ist es ein Schimmer
The collection is divided into four sections of unequal length, with the second section, “Brennender Dornbusch” the longest. In the third section, Wegwarten, the poems are longer and more complex. For example, in “Die Mücken” Lehnert describes the first swarms of mosquitos in spring, suggests a comparison of the reaction of city-dwellers both to them and to refugees, then deftly sketches ways in which mosquitos and humans, in general, resemble each other.
The fourth section contains only four poems. Three of them take as their point of departure sentences from Luther, between the second and the third is one that cites Luther’s erstwhile disciple, the more radical Thomas Müntzer. The final poem, combining quotations from a sermon Luther gave on the gospel account of Jesus opening the mouth of a mute and report of Luther on his death-bed, is a fitting conclusion to the book.
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