An Observation during the Exchange of Functional Elites

By Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Translated by Peter Lach-Newinsky

This scrabbling sound,
a scraping, day and night,
of toes, fingers, claws –
that comes from the scratching,
from the climbing, the crawling of those
who, breath held,
want up, up,

 
ever higher, full of fear,
fear the sandy slope
might give way under their nails,
taking them sliding down
whence they came,
in fact the more they, in panic,
even before the crumbly edge

dissolves, collapses, begin
to trample around on all
they think under them,
the deeper, ineluctably,

 downwards