Grüβ vom Krampus

Joshua Daniel Edwin

My home is a walk-in snuffbox heaped
in Alpine tumble-snow. My fame

has made life easy: now I melt in among
my brash pretenders. At Christmastime,

so many crabby widowed men in masks
lope like drunken wolves through half-lit

birch-whipped squares, I am dismissed
as a relic of dusked superstition.

A stopped pocket-watch means someone’s died.
No one sees me tail the night parade, counting

children with my hooded bookish gaze.
They let their window locks grow soft.

My uncanny friend, the wind, elides
my hoofprints from the snow-bright lawns.


Joshua Daniel Edwin studied poetry and literary translation at Columbia University. His poetry haunts the internet courtesy of The Adirondack Review, Avatar Review, and Feathertale. His translations of Dagmara Kraus' poetry have appeared or are forthcoming with Asymptote, no man's land, Argos Books and Anomalous Press and were awarded a PEN Translation Fund grant in 2012. He is a member of the editorial board for the magazine Circumference: Poetry in Translation, which you can visit at circumferencemag.com.