"In times of need, gold is weighed, and in despair, one swallows the clock." Security and sex, the Banat and Berlin, wandering monk and scheduled flight: a lyrical body of work in over 100 poems by one of our most important contemporary poets, much of it unpublished. "Poetry gives you what it takes away," says Richard Wagner. Between 1969 and 2016, he wrote nearly a thousand poems. While his early poetry was influenced by Brecht, Wagner embraced the currents of pop and beat culture in the early 80s. His work from the 90s is heavily marked by his emigration to Germany in 1987 with Herta Müller. His late poetry is existential and densely aphoristic. It reveals a poet who defends life in the face of illness.