[…]

…letters and words arranged in a regular square pattern. Most letters occupy a square (except the ‘I’ and ‘R’ for example). The overall print is a square, too.

The text is German. It is the first line of a poem by Ernst Stadler (1883-1914). It reads ‘So sind wir deinen Wunden nachgegangen’, roughly ‘So, we followed your wounds’.

The poem is called ‘An die Schönheit’ (‘To Beauty’). I do not have an English translation of Stadler’s works, so here is my attempt at the first few lines:

“So, we followed your wounds | like children who, drunken from the sun’s glow, | with a smile on their faces, in sweet expectation, | and overwhelmed by a maelstrom of golden light, | left the gray gates of the city behind.”

[…]

-M.