Endlich wieder Sonne spüren,
und das Gras unter meinen Füßen fühlen.

Endlich wieder in der Luft,
wunderbar zarter Blumenduft.

Endlich wieder bunte Farben,
heilen meine Winternarben.

Endlich wieder warme Tage,
und nur eine Frage:

Endlich wieder mit dir sein,
hier im warmen Sonnenschein?

Stress
Jeden Tag
Stress
Ich kann nicht mehr
Es ist 5 Uhr morgens
Mein Wecker klingelt
Ich will aber noch weiterschlafen
Mindesten noch 5 Minuten
Das geht aber nicht
Sonst verpass ich noch den Bus
Ich komm an
Wieder Schule
Ich kann nicht mehr
Es reicht
Ich hab kein Bock
Ich muss aber durchziehen
Nur noch 2 Jahre
Dann bin ich endlich fertig
Dann zieh ich endlich weg
Aber dann geh ich in die Uni
Ich weiß nicht mal was ich studieren will
Noch mehr Stress
Und danach?
Arbeiten
Arbeiten bis ich sterbe
Wieder Stress
Vielleicht sogar noch mehr
Man kann dem stress nicht entgehen
Oder?
Kann ich dagegen was machen?
Kann ich den Stress ausweichen?
Nein
Das geht nicht
Denn Stress bleibt
Es ist so wie ein Kaugummi den man nicht abbekommt
Es ist so wie ein Monster das dir hinter läuft
Es ist Stress

Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange, alien ...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, unafraid,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.

Originally published by Better Than Starbucks (where it was a featured poem, appeared on the first page of the online version, and earned a small honorarium)

Original text:

Das Lied des Bettlers

Ich gehe immer von Tor zu Tor,
verregnet und verbrannt;
auf einmal leg ich mein rechtes Ohr
in meine rechte Hand.
Dann kommt mir meine Stimme vor,
als hätt ich sie nie gekannt.

Dann weiß ich nicht sicher, wer da schreit,
ich oder irgendwer.
Ich schreie um eine Kleinigkeit.
Die Dichter schrein um mehr.

Und endlich mach ich noch mein Gesicht
mit beiden Augen zu;
wie's dann in der Hand liegt mit seinem Gewicht
sieht es fast aus wie Ruh.
Damit sie nicht meinen ich hätte nicht,
wohin ich mein Haupt tu.

Keywords/Tags: German, Rainer Maria Rilke, translation, beggar, song, rain, sun, ear, palm, voice, gate, gates, door, doors, outside, exposure, poets, trifle, pittance, eyes, face, cradle, head, loneliness, alienation, solitude, no place to lay one's head (like Jesus Christ)



Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Komm, Du ("Come, You")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Liebes-Lied ("Love Song")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to "be"?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar

Wir schreiten vor
Der Winter steht bevor
Und keine Ahnung
Ob der Sommer
Und der Herbst
Das war, was es sich wünschte,
Unser Herz.

Zwischen dem Blick
Zurück und dem nach vorne,
Entreißen wir uns immer wieder
Dem Moment.
In all den Wünschen, Träumen, Illusionen,
uns zu verlieren ist unser Talent.

Vertrauen zu entschlüsseln,
Zu uns und zu den anderen,
Verliert sich in den Tausenden
Scherben des Misstrauens,
Zweifel und Unsicherheit,
Verfolgen uns wie ein Pfeil.
Und eh wir uns versehen,
Hat die Angst uns in den Krallen.

Wir dürfen bluten.
Oft ist's uns fast egal,
Wir wollen nicht vor Schmerzen schreien,
Hauptsache niemand weiß,
Wie's um uns steht.
Und niemand weiß,
Wie es uns wirklich geht.

Verhält ein Held sich so?
So Selbstvernichtungs-froh?
Wir opfern uns dem Überlebensmechanismus,
Denn lieber rennen wir das ganze Leben,
Als zu uns selbst zu stehen,
Uns selbst zu sehen,
Verdammt, wir sind nicht hier,
Nur um zu überleben!

Das Leben ist schön, aber auch schwer,
für manche zu kurz, für andere nicht fair.
Wenn es anders kommt als man denkt,
da ist der eine schon mal gekränkt.
Der andre sieht es mit Begeisterung,
so hat das Leben für ihn noch Schwung.

Aber wenn ein Virus die ganze Welt befällt
und alles zerschellt - das geht ins Geld.
Dann ist auch unser Wohlstand schon bedroht,
und die Lebensqualität gerät in Not.

Regierungen versuchen uns zu schützen,
auch mit Finanzspritzen zu unterstützen,
aber die Spritzen in den Oberarm
sehen Leugner mit größtem Alarm.

Nun dachte man, die Welt hat sich vereint
und kämpft gegen den gemeinsamen Feind,
doch gibt es Leute mit denen kann man nicht reden,
sie können alles stets anders belegen.
Sie meinen, auf die da oben kann man nicht zählen,
deren Plan sei, ihnen die Freiheiten zu stehlen.

Dieses Misstrauen könnte uns leicht zerspalten,
dann wäre ein Bürgerkrieg kaum aufzuhalten.
Wie könnten Leugner ihre Angst verlieren,
damit sie endlich neues Vertrauen riskieren?

Wir sollten gute Beispiele setzen,
uns kümmern um den Ersten und den Letzten.
So entsteht ein guter Gemeinschaftssinn
für alle Ausgegrenzten ein Gewinn.

Ein respektvoller Umgang miteinander, der oft fehlt,
ist was zählt, so sehr zählt, zählt und zählt und zählt.

Many years I have wandered these woods,
Many years I have cast my eyes to the soil.

Many years I was content with this consuming darkness,
Many years I was content with these hyperborean nights.

I felt a warmth once such bitter evening,
I staggered and swayed until I rose upright,
I thought the moon was again out deceiving,
Gifting me again with only false hope this night.

I howled and screamed into the soulless night sky,
Thoughts turned knives into my heart and soul,
Mind cut and gashed now bleeding into my eyes,
I wildly lurched to and fro over this frozen knoll.

Again the light in the northern sky sounded,
I cast my crimson eyes upon it eagerly,
The golden glow left me aghast and astounded,
But I continued to move towards it greedily.

My footsteps left behind a trail of blood,
My footfalls sounded the songs of death,
Those crimson remains now awash with mud,
I fled that dark scene with haggard breath.

Frieden endlich gefunden.

Uneven steps reached the radiant light at last,
Outstretched arms finally experiencing warmth,
Feet gently swept off the frost laden ground,
I was spirited away to the castle of the evening.

Such a marvelous castle, bright and brilliant it was,
I wandered deeper and deeper through it's majesty,
Until I found myself in a room as pure as crystal,
A room inhabited by a single, quiet soul.

I recognized it as myself, but I was mistaken,
I recognized it as solitude, but I was mistaken,
I recognized it as pain, but I was mistaken,
I recognized it as a friend, and I was correct.

Soul approaching, I too traversed towards it,
Standing together, it reached out with a faint smile,
I tenderly held it near,
Until it began to shimmer and glow.

Stars it became before me, each all aflame,
Motionless I stood as it filled with the room with light,
Motionless I stood as it entered my body,
Transforming and transfiguring as it went.

All shades of black and grey could not escape,
Every dark corner was hunted and found guilty,
No unholy sanctuary was safe from this vengeful justice,
Until I rose to a new height, a new plateau.

I took myself into my arms and returned the weight to my shoulders,
I took myself into my legs and skated across the skyline,
I took my myself into my heart and swam through the river,
I took my soul into myself and stood guardian for all eternity.

Wut macht sich in mir breit,
bin gewappnet, mach mich für den Kampf bereit
hab alles getan um uns zu schützen,
hab gemerkt das alles würde nichts nützen
Versteht nicht mal was ich fühle,
was für Gedanken ich mir mach und wie sehr ich mich bemühe

Stattdessen sitz ich hier,
wünschte einfach Flo wär bei mir,
den ihr hättet kennenlernen sollen,
doch es gibt wichtigeres, ihr *******das gar nicht richtig zu wollen
Hatte nach Mittwoch neue Hoffnung gefunden,
spielt keine Rolle, ihr seid frei und ungebunden
ich werde mich nicht weiter um Verständnis bemühen,
kein weiteres Gift versprühen,
werde mich einfach zurück ziehen und euch machen lassen,
versteh nicht wie ihr mich könnt hassen
hab doch alles für euch gegeben,
wollte noch so viel mit euch zusammen erleben


Weis nicht wie das weiter gehen soll,
spüre nur in mir steigt der Groll
vielleicht tut uns Abstand gut,
vielleicht geht dann auch die Wut

Kann nicht bleiben wie es ist,
denn bin dann nur noch mehr angepisst
tu alles damit es klappt,
aber egal was ich sag, ihr seid eingeschnappt

Hoffe wir werden mit der Zeit einen Weg finden,
die Zeit der Krise ohne weitere Schäden überwinden


Wollte morgen so viele Freuden mit euch teilen,
gemeinsam all unsere Wunden heilen
hab meine 100 Mauer endlich durchbrochen,
doch fühlt sich an als Brecht ihr mir jeden Knochen
hab meiner Familie von Flo erzählt,
wollte auch das ihr ihn auswählt
hatte mich tierisch auf morgen gefreut,
tief in mir gerade alles schreit und diese Entscheidung bereut

Ihr stellt eine Frage,
die ist für euch schon eine Aussage
hattet alles für euch schön geplant,
doch in mir drin bereits etwas mich warnt.....

Wer freut sich nicht gern auf Weihnachten,
denn es ist das Fest der Liebe.
Anders kann man es auch betrachten,
wenn geschenkt gibts erst mal Hiebe.

So ist die Freude leicht gedämpft,
die Bescherung muss noch warten,
bis die Tränen sind bekämpft,
dann kann man endlich starten.

Gedichte werden vorgetragen,
'O du Fröhliche' gesungen,
keiner will die Stimmung hinterfragen,
so ist das Fest dann noch gelungen.

that's the second time i was offered to have a *******, i honestly wasn't ready for this one; Khedra was telling me that the girl with the glasses was in a good mood, she stressed it as: she's really, really in a good mood, how about you give us extra and i tell her to come up? i replied: i've just come back from a 12 hour shift, i'm only after a quickie... SLAP... well yeah! i slap her *** during *******, pinch her, bite her... i follow the Kama Sutra to an exactness, obviously i have read it... i know that some women don't get it, but the ones that do? well... it makes ******* all the more fun, after all, we're not slimy mollusks wriggling about, there's more to us than mere caressing and *******... you don't have to **** out all the alternative kinks, although... i'd love to enlarge the ****** to a full body latex suit... i'm not going to lie...

she clearly missed me, i missed her,
but when she came back she knew i was already with
two other girls, Michaela and... oh my god...
i forgot her name: but not her face...
the one that talked too much during ***...
i hate talking during ***:
i don't need "god" in the bedroom...
eyes speak for the eyes,
lips speak for the lips,
phallus speaks for the phallus...
etc.
            but in Khedra's presence i couldn't
just... pick someone else...
i picked her because i knew i'd be guaranteed
unprotected ***...
that's how the rock rolls as it were...
you establish a trust with a woman when
she sees your approach to hygiene...
and then she doesn't even bother asking for more
money... hell... oral and actual genital interaction
unprotected... i forgot how good it feels:
although, like i already mentioned:
i'm also a big fan of condoms...
why? you never know how a woman will
put it on... it varies so greatly...
one will **** it on... another will stretch it
and put it on... various techniques...
  some will look you in the eyes others prefer
not to look: probably reimagining you as
some monster...
i'm no Don Juan, not some Casanova:
my pockets are not that deep...
                        i'm a crustacean lover...
                               sure... if i had more money to shower,
buy gifts... alas: all i have is Ovid's lament
to girls... i can... give them a book of my poems...
a ****** gift, i know... but hey: beggars can't be choosers...
but i knew Khedra missed me...
why? she wanted to be on top this time round...
she usually wants me to arch over her
and do her... sorry: take her to the monastery
of missionaries from Portugal in Japan
(some ******* of my own, thinking)...
i was startled at the fact that i left a ******* imprint
in her...
she sat on my slid it in: right...
*****... it's like with bras... it takes rigid fingers
to undo a bra... the whole point of penetrating a woman's
******? you don't aim for the floral pattern for the *****:
that's for oral ***...
   for the gob to slobber all over it... tongue whirlwind...
when penetrating? you're basically "pretending"
to be aiming for the *******... the distance between
the ****** entry point and the ******* is pretty short...
it's strange how it works...
but i knew she missed me because she recognised
me... already two or three cowgirl giddy-up attempts
of her and she was having those hot-shivers...
she was quivering... hey!
she had to stop from time to time because:
the hot-shivers were attacking her...
    no... of course it wasn't a full ******... but a microcosm
of one...

point being: i didn't ask for permission to try all
the other girls... she told me, she told me:
YOU HAVE TO TRY ALL THE OTHER GIRLS...
she also asked me... tell me, truthfully:
which did you prefer? Michaela, the short fat
girl with ******* or the girl who was sitting opposite
me? the tall, legs to the heavens?
so i told her... the former...
i had a thing for this pornographic actress...
oddly enough also Romanian: Jasmine Black...
and i was like... i need to find me someone similar...
hey presto! Michaela!
the exact proportions: i wouldn't say fat,
i'd say: a pretty plump plum of a woman...

Khedra just kept slapping my chest...
i just kept slapping her ***... biting her chin:
the usual round of bollocking...
i'm done with the English approach to ***...
double standards: yeah: ooh ooh... keep it in the bedroom!
shh! shh! and then once in the bedroom!
all the ugly kinks come out...
all those ungodly conversations: "conversations"
about mummies, daddies and "god" knows what else...
there's no talking when i'm *******:
again... i will no desecrate the altar of this much
pleasure by bringing: and in the beginning there was
the word and the word was with god...
and it was... ever heard of an Eclectus or a Quaker
Parakeet talk, without man talking first?
no! in the beginning only the gods could talk...
mind you... hmm: ooh! ooh!
if Prometheus (the titan) brought down fire to men
and was punished for it by the gods...
who brought down the word (communication,
writing) down from the gods to be left among
men?! who?! who?!
was it not the jealous god, who's name i will not utter
but encrypt?! so the Hebrew deity
would be seen... in the Greek mind...
as a Titan! well... no wonder he's jealous:
the people who venerate him are constantly punished!
why? if Prometheus was punished for brining
to man the fire... the Hebrews are punished for the fact
that their deity brought down "telepathic" communication:
writing, scribbling... and the gods watched
on and saw: well... ****'s going to hit the fan proper
when they start scribbling graffiti on cement walls
thinking they're ****** clever...
dyslexia strong! they'll muddle up the sounds
and overcomplicate their spelling(s)!

i love it... writing *** and about the gods...
it's like the perfect combination for... ah ha ha: disaster...
the days of scientific rationalisation are over:
it's time to return to mythology -
look at it this way: mythology is the antithesis
of journalism: i'm sort of having a backlash
from all the journalism: degraded journalism,
tabloid rather than investigative journalism:
we're not talking high quality journalism
of All the President's Men... we're talking trash:
at best a journalist tells me that X happened at Y...
or there's the editorial section of a newspaper
where i get opinions: a cul de sac of opinions...
since, it's the "rhetoricians'" corner... what sort
of dialectic do you think newspapers allow?
    it's slim... with those "letters" to the editor...
journalism as shambles...

    as i'm writing this i'm gazing at the most beautiful
in heaven... a late summer lightning storm...
lightning without: either thunder or rain...
as if the sky was a giant jellyfish + brain and i'm seeing
it think... wrestle with itself...

- i honestly don't know why i allowed the *******
of my cats give them names...
but they stuck... shouldn't the owner of the pet give
his pet a name, rather than allow the ******* to name them?
QUORUS... honestly? it's not that bad...
quo rus: where are you going, Russian?
and he's ginger... fair enough... makes sense now...
but he's what? 7+ years old...
so... back in the day any conflict with Russia didn't
make sense... my cat's name just makes sense now...
i didn't name him... perhaps: qua rus,
id est: as being Russian... Quorus?! are you a Russian?!
last time i heard Maine ***** came from Maine:
north America...

mind you: Andrew Lloyd Webber got it spot on in
Cats... when he, or whoever did: wrote that cats don't
have one name, they have several names...
they have a name for whatever i feel like calling it...
my female Maine **** is usually
called ヤマモト (ya-ma-mo-to) whenever she's
imploring to be let in to the house:
but in her persistent silence, she just sits by the door
giving no indication to be let in...
i forget how many names i have given Quorus...
but i sometimes: secretly give him the name
******... but that's between me and him...
either ****** or AZRAEL... poor ******...
each time i go into the garden to refill my cup with ice-cubes...
i leave the bedroom: he's sleeping quietly
as if pretending to be a cushion...
the moment i leave he's up and standing on the spot
of the windowsill where i perch to drink and smoke...
looking out for me...
whether or not i will return or not...
then he'll jump onto the roof above the kitchen
and play the CERBERUS' role... watching the lightning
storm (without thunder or rain) with me...

hmm... what happened today?
today i was relaxing after a mammoth shift juggling
over the weekend... i didn't feel like doing much...
i cleaned the house... because i'm a ******* pedantic...
i need the house to be clean:
i can't allow my parents to clean the house for themselves:
my mother's arthritis doesn't allow me to just
leave a massive stink... mind you: it felt so pointless
vacuuming... i wasn't picking much dirt from
the floors... and then obviously mopping the floors...
i like the smell of citrus on wood...

then? a quick bicycle session on my Trek Merlin 5
"Rolls Royce"... recycling empty glass bottles...
buying a whiskey and some pepsi-cola...
oh... and some MAJOR good news...

what's for dinner? pizza... homemade, what else?!
there's probably one thing i love making more than
ice-cream... esp. mint choc-chip ice-cream...
one day i'll make me chocolate ice-cream...
i hate chocolate ice-cream...
i have this fine potent mint growing in my garden...
the ice-cream came out amazing:
i didn't even have to add any artificial colouring:
just the right sort of colour... pale green...
much much paler than the colour of my irises...

ENDLICH, REGEN!
         ich brauchen wasser für mein bäume im mein garten!

but there's only one thing that gives me more pleasure
than making ice-cream... ooh...
making pizza-dough! i love sculpting that
*** of a lazy lady of yeast... the smell of yeast
is about as intoxicating as the scent of wet
rosemary or thyme or mint in the night
when it rains and rains and rains...
nothing can compare to making pizza-dough:
well, apart from making mint choc-chip ice-cream...
or synthesising esters in a chemical laboratory...
or synthesising polyester...
the event horizon on that ***** of an experiment:
ha ha... two liquids... and you're just pinching
the "good stuff" from the two liquids not mixing...

like i told one coworker: i rather enjoy listening
to music when i fall asleep...
but... but.
if it starts raining? and i'm about to fall asleep?
the music is turned off and i fall into a lullaby
of a symphony of necessary tears...
some people would tell me that there's no Bach in rain:
i.e. that there's no polyphony that can be ascribed
to rain: i **** right disagree...
that's like saying the sound of the sea is the same
as the sound a river generates or for that matter
a lake... or... a foot stepping into a puddle...
or the sound of a waterfall...

it's only a Monday and i'm already exited for the week ahead...
i couldn't wait for today because i knew i would
be recharging... father's lunch for tomorrow?
sweet peppers and sliced iceberg salad as the base...
on top? pancetta, strawberries,
goat's cheese... figs... with a balsamic glaze dressing...
tomorrow? Khedra didn't appreciate my ****** outgrowths...
she told me, strictly: your kissing is prickling me...
i agreed... my moustache is too long...
i ought to know better... it becomes half a bother
and a bother fully to boot when my moustache
"wets itself" when i take a sip of ms. amber's metaphorical
**** juices...
of course i'm still growing the FU MANCHU...
upon strict orders of the Turk... my love-patch needs
to be as long as my actual beard... and my beard needs
to hide my entire neck...

so tomorrow... i'm excited about visiting my Turkish barber
and getting a trim...
that's tomorrow...
Thursday? i'm off to the brothel to ****... simple as
1 + 1 = 2... i'll do the West Ham shift, finish at 10:30 and
then get my silly ***** wet...
maybe have a *******, maybe not...
i'm paying back a debt... i already stashed half of it
(£200) in my writing desk... i'll take out £200 more tomorrow...
a ******* Lynyrd Skynyrd sing-along
when you're debt free and only working on a debt-system
without any credit... i never understood
the point of the credit system...
why, would, you, use, credit?
why, spend, money, you, don't, have?
after working level 5 at Wembley... for that... tribute
concert for Taylor Hawkings... the managers asked me...
do you suffer from vertigo?!
which vertigo?!
the height vertigo?! didn't i tell you that i used
to be a roofer?! i must have...

height vertigo? yeah... i sometimes have this wild "idea"
in my head when i'm standing at a decent amount of height...
my legs start trembling, i start to grip some barrier...
some stable object... why? i start thinking about jumping
down! that's my height "vertigo": i start thinking that:
just perhaps i have a parachute or an exoskeleton!
although i have another "vertigo": it's a monetary "vertigo"...
i hate to be in debt... i never spend on credit...
either i have the money and spend it...
or i don't have the money and, ergo: don't spend it...
i abhor monetary "vertigos"...
     of course i think about money...
some people are geologists... some people are economists...
it's not that hard to confuse the two,
equating: pebbles = coins...
after all... what are coins? if not peanuts... certainly not
peanuts... then most certainly pebbles:
nuggets of copper with insignia:
"things" of "value" that are only allocated value
because someone said so:
like the usual critique of religion... it's all man-made...
sure... and economy is also man-made...
i abhor gold: i could never don a gold ring on my fingers...

sure... press some gold into a circle...
slap a pretty face like that of ol' Lizzy on it! hey presto!
"value"... otherwise, what?
mind you: a tickling on my legs...
it finally started raining... a spider was made into
a... a... banana-boat man...
escaping conflict of rain... i picked him up from
my tickled leg... put him on my hand...
dropped him off on my private library's shelf...
on... level 3... the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam...
i should get some flies for him at some point...

eh... spiders... flies... foxes... it's not like they're
exotica that certain women like...
i just figured it out... the men women choose to mate
with... oh! it's so certainly most necessary
for the men to have "sleeves"... yeah... at least one
hand covered in tattoos! women love men with
sleeves... the only "tattoos" are on my brain...
but i've witnessed the aesthetic of reproduction...
on the sly... the men with sleeves get to...
oh this one dude... i could "hear" his testosterone being slurped
up when he was giving the duties of daddy
with the buggy watching over his 2 week old babe...
or that guy two doors down...
mate! you're ******! why? you mother-in-law
is coming to see you 5 times a day! you're living about
20 metres from her! you're ****** mate!
me? i have ms. amber and philosophy for company!
i don't think i could talk to a woman: "privately"
outside a specified environment...
sure... women try... we talk on shifts...
if i have to be cold and exacting: exclusive...
hell... this one manager tried it with me today...
blah blah this... blah blah that...
so i replied to his "ha ha": fair enough...
i'll be more EXCLUSIVE next time...
      
                     i know that they employ complete air-heads...
retards... and they are licesened as security "guards":
i was telling my coworker: i'm really reluctant to get
the "baddge"... for (1) the hours are longer...
for (2) the pay is not much greater...
for (3) i only want to do this part-time,
don't get me wrong... it's great... but it's only great
when i say it's great... not when "management"
tells me it's "great"....
there's probably a point (4) and a point (5)...
but... ah... whatever...

hmm... it's back to Andrew Lloyd Webber
and the Cats musical lyrics,
coupled with the 13th Warrior transcript...
between
            Ahmed íbn Fahdlan íbn...
  and Herger... íbn this íbn that... name? IBN...
ha ha... that's like with cats...
Quorus "íbn" AZAEL "íbn" AZRAEL "íbn"
RYCERZ ZAKUTY-ŁEB....
   i.e. knight-mutton-headed...
a mutton-headed-"knight"...
                 chained-head... i too thought that
cats ought to be by the fireplace when it rains...
this one? prefers the company of the activities' of dogs...
i wish i owned a dog... instead?
i own a cat with an invisible leash...
he doesn't go far... i wish i owned a dog for the simple
reason that he might eat what i ate: letft-overs...

but i can't wait for Wednesday... the woman doing
my mother's nails called up: she's having trouble with her
1 year old toddler...
it was supposed to be a Saturday for my mother
getting her nails done...
i just sat there...
she can do Wednesday... but she has to drop off her
autistic older girl and come with "that" BAHOR
(crying baby) to a manicure and pedicure session...
but the baby is a RUGRAT... a little DEMON...
ooh! ooh!
me me! me me!
i just heard that there might be an issue...
i jumped in my head: hit the imaginary ceiling
then came back down (no glass)... i can do it!

come to think of it... cats are predictable creatures...
why? they're changeless...
but babies?! oh wow! it's like i'm back
in a chemistry lab... but instead of dealing
with potent substances... i'm dealing
with the "non-existence" of a soul!
i love it! i love it more than slapping prostitutes
riding me while they slap me in the face
and i slap them in the ***...
that's not true... the only girl that ever slapped me
in the face was Ilona... a Russian rich girl poor boy's wet-dream...
Khedra slapped me in the more appropriate place
while admiring my chest and stomach hair...
pinching my *******...

i'm going to have the time of my life on Wednesday...
i'll be baby-sitting! what's wrong with baby-sitting!
at worsst and at best she'll be pulling at my beard
and i'll be reversing the "talking parrot" sounds
of mimic... i'll be clucking... she'll be clucking back...
i'm too STEM orientated to think about life
subjectively... i'll be a male with a baby in my arms
on Wednesday... and a ******* in my arms
on a Thursday...

of course i'm going to take a picture!
i love babies... it will be so unlike petting a cat...
but it will be like petting a cat...
but unlike a cat: babies are forever unpredictable...
i'll slow down on drinking the "amber juice":
why? i want to have some fun with a baby...
i hope we can do whatever it necessary to
not relate... like the memory of my great-grandfather
in the kindergarten... him as a shadow
playing the big piano and me playing the toy piano...

MALVINA... that's the BAMBINO'S name...
the first girl i ever fell in love with:
i must have have been 6.... she was this albino blonde...
and her name was MALVINA...
this is going to be such a trip (if it happens)...
she's going to be pulling at my beard...
i'll be looking into her eyes
of disorientation...
thank god... she's not mine...
i can gladly keep watch of children that don't belong
to me... more willingly than you think...
i couldn't... some ideas need brushing up on...
i need to keep an eye on those...
but... from time to time?
if i get to become a baby-sitter?
i'll be a baby-sitter...
it's a welcome alternative to having to please
prostitutes...

hmph!
perhaps i'm an arrogant "****"... today i walked to
the local saying good-afternoon to one old woman...
saying another hello
to: hello Matthew... hello Matthew...
we grabbed each other's hands like in the 1950s
movies... when two Roman noblemen greet each
other... i.e. shook arms instead of hands...
we pulled the left hand on top of the hands
shaking: so? the four-hand-greeting...

there's something special about acquiring the "familial":
locus orientation that 20th century cosmopolitan
existentialism simply missed...
i can't wait for Wednesday... twice: thrice better than
sleeping with prostitutes... a sample of fatherhood...
i just... eh... what can you do?
it's not up to me... is it?
i can't exactly make women choose what's
to be chosen... if they chase after idiots.. idiotic times...
i came to one single mother once...
the one that "thought" she smelled alcohol on me...
i came back to her:
with homemade wine: cloudy... so? i chose
Franziskaner Hefe Weissbier...
you, girl, are going to drink my homemade:
cloudy wine... i'll drink...
a coorporaate cloudy beer with you...
single mum... her son's name? Friedrich...
i read his poem out-loud to him...
i also brought around a homemade banana loaf...
***** wasn't buying the myth...
oh well...  a guy comes round on a bicycle:
he has a banana loaf... homemade wine (cloudy)...

there's this much of love i am willing to give!
beyond that... ON YOUR, *******, WAY!
there's no point!
you've been hurt, i've been hurt... no!
i'm happy to just deal with a woman who needs
baby-sitting... doing my mother's nails...
needing someone to take take of her baby...
i'll do! i'll do! i'll do it!

it's ******* sad... for however much you want
to love: you're told to love less...
and by the same amount of "less":
you're asked to love "more"!

to love as yourself: you're never going to love
yourself as there might be a male "self"
to speak of: you ******* idiot!
you're a ******* toothpick in the waterfall!
i'm not saying "man-up": i'm just saying...
there are reality checks in place...
why do you think all the grandmas are *******
grandmas beginning and ending with?
where are the men?
in, a place, allocating, the most, bothered, men...
their... safeguard... from... interacting... with...
women....
me? i like to be the mediator...
that's me... between ******* and toddler...
eh... "ring baron" of a woman of: "beached whale"
value... what?!

that's Wednesday though... toddler Malvine is
here on Wednesday...
tomorrow's a Tuesday... that's a trip to Istanbul
for a beard trim...

i lost my beard-envy when i heard this one
Arab colt say: i love your beard, sir!
sir?! beard? i have a beard?!
i need to trim my mustache to kiss her in a way
she wants to be kissed...
but a beard?
i can't wait for Malvina... the toddler...
i want those:
chubby-bubbly-bub-bub-cheeks pressed
against mine... pretending to be a father
knowing that i'm not: a father...

i want cheese on top of the toast!
i want to keep all the Talmud secrets,
i want to keep the secrecies of babies
akin to the alignment of women.

p.s. and i have to agree with Bukowski in his
wisened post-mortem publication about
"going all the way"... there's no battle worth fighting
except with oneself... going all the way...
writing into the night... watching a lightning
storm: hearing no thunder...
thunder eluded me yesterday: there was only
lightning and then the glorious fall of rain...
in his own words:
and you will: you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame fire...

i am alone: i am not alone... i'm writing this post-scriptum
during the day because i felt that the night
was too beautiful to waste it upon completing
this "little effort"...

i just can't wait for tomorrow...
i'll take a picture of the two of us on the grass...
hopefully i'll get her mother's approval to jump
into the hot-tub with her... my little BAMBINO...

hmm... why is it that babies are as generic as old people?
when we're born we have universal needs...
when we're at the closure of our mortality:
it's all the same for either man and woman...
babies look alike: whether male or female,
the same is true for old people...
it's only in our prime that we seek out diverged
***-based needs...
men want particular things
as women want particular things...
men crave solace in aloneness...
women despise any talk of solance
equating aloneness with loneliness...

   what happened to the inquisitive old men
of antiquity akin to Socrates?
why have men not bothered to inquire about the intellect
when all their youthful toils of the body
have been completed? it's so stereotypical
of middle-aged men to assume that philosophy
books ought to be read in old age...
nope... that's completely untrue...
philosophy books ought to be read in a man's
20s... and by the time a man is ripened for old age...
he ought to be able to mix his early reading of philosophy
books (a priori) with his experience of life
(a posteriori)...

but it's not enough to simply say: logic... philosophy...
reason...
the Chinese Taoist sages covered pretty much everything
that modern science: finally caught up with...
what's ontology in Chinese philosophy? XING...
what's inherently me...
no... whatever the current trend is in western thinking:
implosive "western" & "thinking" i will perform the rite
of Pontius Pilate over... i will wash my hands clean
of the whole affair... this pseudo-intellectualism
this... GAME... of "GRAMMAR"...
there are far more interesting categories of words
than simply pronouns... nouns: for a start are more
interesting... how there's very little chance to catch
a diminutive noun in English... hey! that's a start!

you can't say beak (of a bird) in a way that beak:
allocated a diminutive suffix to the noun...
you have to say: little beak...
ah... but in other languages you can do just that!

dziób - beak... the diminutive being?
   dziobek... little beak...
                                             like i explained to this
older Turkish woman i was working a shift with
(god i fancied her, only later did i find out that she was
Turkish... that doe with fear in her eyes...
i still fancy her...) when she asked me about my accent...
i told her: to have an Essex accent you have to be born
in Essex... she lives in Kent and the Essex lads are
horrid to her... but i told her: since i'm bilingual...
there's this natural buffer zone for me to not have
a localised accent... i can have an generic: cosmopolitan
London accent... but even then... i'm a chameleon...

ha! to think that i didn't ask for permission to **** other
girls: Khedra actually demanded it!
she told me: you have to try all of them...
her ******* habbit and harking at non-existent phlegm
from her throat and nose...
well: good that i don't like *******...
enough of caffeine and nicotine is just about the same
for me...
the moment she mentioned having a *******
i was like... this second time ought to be better...
the first time i wasn't prepared...
i'll juggle the finances and take out more next time...
first time? with all that ****** changes i was sort
of disorientated...

but i can't wait for tomorrow... why?
i'll be babysitting! i'll have a BAMBINO to look after...
this gorgeous woman is coming over to
do my mother's nails...
she wouldn't have come because her bambino
is so much hassle these days...
as my mother was talking i was erratically nodding:
please bring her! please bring her!
i won't be drinking too much tonight...
i need to wake up at 7am and make an important
phone-call come 8am... then i'll wait...

seriously... that's the best dichotomy of: the life
of the other in your hands...
from slapping and biting prostitutes to then ensuring
my large hands take to tender care of a baby...
ooh! i'm sizzling with giggles and burps and farts
and stomach gurgling sensations...
i'll put on some vinyl record for her...
i'll focus a bright light on my little Frankenstein...
i'll bring down the word from on high into
her ears and then through her mouth
i'll try to steal the first word from her mother's
attempt at communication...
she already performed a mimic of me when i started clucking
my tongue... she clucked back:
the cluck of a horse buckling on cobblestones...

i'll have my little Frankenstein experiment...
i'll work around words and settle for onomatopoeias
first... i'll imitate sounds that humans are allowed
to make... it will be like going to a brothel:
but better... better still: it won't be my child...
it will be someone else's child...

come to think of it... it almost feels like that scene
from Game of Thrones... when a baby is brought before
the Night King... it will be such a welcome break from
the already idiosyncratic, unique character of my cats...
i can't change them: not that i can change a cat's ontology...
or for that matter being able to change Quarus...
ibn ****** ibn Azreal...
                 but i can travel to the moon and Antartica with
this baby... i can revel in leaving my first footprint
in the psyche of this child: not mine...
grant me the bare minimum of at least 3 hours
with this loose canon of an **** that will probably ****
the entire length of the Thames' river...

nothing to do today, cleaned the house yesterday,
there's still plenty of left-over pizza...
i worked the entire weekend... even yesterday
i didn't drink that much... but my body went into shutdown
relax mode... i went to bed at 12am and got up at 12pm...
Show Me Love crushed me...
walking around so many women fried my brain...
the moment one approached me for a handshake
and a wave another approached me to dance with her
then another approached me to "face the mirror"
and make me smile while doing a mirror-wriggling dance...
not even in the brothel did i see so much:
ripe, flesh...
by the end i was exhausted like a Solomon might...
3 years later... one for each night... and he still didn't
manage to make the rounds of his harem...
so? well... back in the day they didn't have ******...
so? he asked for a few willing men to be castrated...
he cut their ***** off and said: here... be their playthings...
otherwise female homosexuality will not allow me
their arousal upon my return!

well... sometimes a little bit of bitterness does seep into me,
it comes in, but: it does take off its shoes,
it asks me whether it can smoke a cigarette,
it does all the very formal things i except certain states
of mind to allow me to "challenge"... it only comes
when a woman ponders my state: why aren't you still
married?
i swollow the "pill" and in turn ponder...
hmm... why? why?                       hmm... why?
isn't it obvious?
                             i could swear it was obvious!

the best conversations i ever had were with myself:
on paper... akin to this...
the cost of living is not worth putting too many hours
into working...
working is far better than stealing...
but i'm also not going to follow the route of rich people:
how do rich people get rich?
through loop holes that poor people can't navigate...
like my neighbour (who killed my cat)
she only own an off-license shop...
   but she... blah blah... she had three "bulgaries"
in the past 4 years... some that happened at noon...
some in the middle of the night: me? i'm usually perched on
my windowsill until 4am... i saw jack-****...
evidently: a scam...
                  
born into a Catholicism: yet i have retained all the Protestant
traits of honesty... even i once exclaimed
that England "used" to be a high-trust society...
it still might be: but in London you better have
double-standards... esp. with the Somalis taking breaks
on shifts... some you can oil-up toward your
persuasions about work by managing to
give them free food... otherwise... Sisyphus at his toil...

until tomorrow Malvina... until tomorrow my temp.
joy of a Bambino.

while doing the household chores, cleaning the throne
of thrones, vacuuming, mopping the floors...
peeling vegetable skins for roast vegetables...

and finally: darkness came,
with all her fiddly bits...

it probably sounds better in German...
let's see...
und endlich: dunkelheit kam,
mit alles ihr knifflig bits...

yeah... sounds better in die deutschezung(e)...
from now on: ZUNG... not...
ZUNGÉ... none of that French *******...
i.e.: tongue: toong... like... elaborating on
TONG...

so i woke up and had a vision...
if you were to translate Katakana into
Braille... you'd need... a su doku grid...
a 3 x 3... not a 2 x 3...
i abhor the modern acclaim for
the hieroglyphs that emojis are...
emoticons, whatever...

i think it's best to start with the vowels,
since, they are alone-standing
in ***-spreschen...

ア (⠁)   A
イ (⠊)   I
ウ (⠥)   U
エ (⠑)   E
オ (⠕)   O

     no, seriously,
if you were to create a Braille equivalence
for blind Japanese people, you'd require
a 3 x 3 grid, it's mathematically sound...
there's nothing brilliantly difficult
about solving a su doku puzzle...
it's just an eye-strain...

people stop solving these puzzle...
or rarely begin "thinking" it's a bit like
arithmetic,
mind you: i much prefer the spelling arithemetic
of words, mein gott...
the backlog, the storage of so many words...
i'm almost happy that i don't come
from a culture centred upon
syllable encoding...
yes, thank you... i'll just stick to these atoms
over 'ere...

i'm happiest though, when i get to write
authentically translatable words in
some European language into Japanese,
without nuance... ZERO...
                                             ゼロ...

people can emoji all they want...
i'm not going to be looking into Chinese ideograms...
i need something elevated...
and nothing out of Asia is more elevated
than Katakana / Hangul.

p.s. 502 bad gateway bypass:
title - itchy grading
body -calypso on the guillotine

These are modern English translations of poems by the German poets Hermann Allmers, Hannah Arendt, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, H. Distler, Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Günter Grass, Heinrich Heine, Johann Georg Jacobi, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Schiller, Angelus Silesius and Georg Trakl.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl, an Austrian poet who wrote in German
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.




Heinrich Heine

The Seas Have Their Pearls
by Heinrich Heine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The seas have their pearls,
The heavens their stars;
But my heart, my heart,
My heart has its love!

The seas and the sky are immense;
Yet far greater still is my heart,
And fairer than pearls and stars
Are the radiant beams of my love.

As for you, tender maiden,
Come steal into my great heart;
My heart, and the sea, and the heavens
Are all melting away with love!



Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926] was a Bohemian-Austrian poet generally considered to be a major poet of the German language. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French. He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague, then the capital of Bohemia and part of Austria-Hungary. During Rilke's early years his mother, who had lost a baby daughter, dressed him in girl's clothing. In 1895 and 1896, he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich. In 1902 Rilke traveled to Paris to write about the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rilke became deeply involved with the sculpture of Rodin and for a time served as Rodin's secretary. Under Rodin's influence Rilke transformed his poetic style from the subjective to the objective. His best-known poem, "Archaic Torso of Apollo," was written about a sculpture by Rodin and speaks about the life-transforming properties (and demands) of great art. Rilke allegedly died the most poetic of deaths, having been pricked by a rose. He was in ill health, the wound failed to heal, and he died as a result.

Poems translated here include Herbsttag ("Autumn Day"), Der Panther ("The Panther"), Archaïscher Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo"), Komm, Du ("Come, You"), Das Lied des Bettlers ("The Beggar's Song"), Liebeslied ("Love Song"), and the First Elegy, also known as the First Duino Elegy.



Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This is a poem about a major resolution: changing the very nature of one's life. While it is only my personal interpretation of the poem above, I believe Rilke was saying to himself: "I must change my life." Why? Perhaps because he wanted to be a real artist, and when confronted with real, dynamic, living and breathing art of Rodin, he realized that he had to inject similar vitality, energy and muscularity into his poetry. Michelangelo said that he saw the angel in a block of marble, then freed it. Perhaps Rilke had to find the dynamic image of Apollo, the God of Poetry, in his materials, which were paper, ink and his imagination.—Michael R. Burch

Archaïscher Torso Apollos

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle
und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Herbsttag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.
Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.



Du im Voraus (“You who never arrived”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who never arrived in my arms, my Belovéd,
lost before love began...

How can I possibly know which songs might please you?

I have given up trying to envision you
in portentous moments before the next wave impacts...
when all the vastness and immenseness within me,
all the far-off undiscovered lands and landscapes,
all the cities, towers and bridges,
all the unanticipated twists and turns in the road,
and all those terrible terrains once traversed by strange gods—
engender new meaning in me:
your meaning, my enigmatic darling...

You, who continually elude me.

You, my Belovéd,
who are every garden I ever gazed upon,
longingly, through some country manor’s open window,
so that you almost stepped out, pensively, to meet me;
who are every sidestreet I ever chanced upon,
even though you’d just traipsed tantalizingly away, and vanished,
while the disconcerted shopkeepers’ mirrors
still dizzily reflected your image, flashing you back at me,
startled by my unwarranted image!

Who knows, but perhaps the same songbird’s cry
echoed through us both,
yesterday, separate as we were, that evening?

Du im Voraus

Du im Voraus
verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene,
nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind.
Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt,
zu erkennen. Alle die großen
Bildern in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft,
Städte und Türme und Brücken und un-
vermutete Wendung der Wege
und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern
einst durchwachsenen Länder:
steigt zur Bedeutung in mir
deiner, Entgehende, an.

Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,—
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.

Komm, Du

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne,
heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb:
wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne
in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt,
der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen,
nun aber nähr’ ich dich und brenn in dir.
Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen
ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier.
Ganz rein, ganz planlos frei von Zukunft stieg
ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen,
so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen
um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg.
Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt?
Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein.
O Leben, Leben: Draußensein.
Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.



Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!

Liebes-Lied

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.



Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear
in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange,
alien ...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, instead,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.

Translator's note: I believe the last line may be a reference to a statement made by Jesus Christ in the gospels: that foxes have their dens, but he had no place to lay his head. Rilke may also have had in mind Jesus saying that what someone does "to the least of these" they would also be doing to him.

Das Lied des Bettlers

Ich gehe immer von Tor zu Tor,
verregnet und verbrannt;
auf einmal leg ich mein rechtes Ohr
in meine rechte Hand.
Dann kommt mir meine Stimme vor,
als hätt ich sie nie gekannt.

Dann weiß ich nicht sicher, wer da schreit,
ich oder irgendwer.
Ich schreie um eine Kleinigkeit.
Die Dichter schrein um mehr.

Und endlich mach ich noch mein Gesicht
mit beiden Augen zu;
wie's dann in der Hand liegt mit seinem Gewicht
sieht es fast aus wie Ruh.
Damit sie nicht meinen ich hätte nicht,
wohin ich mein Haupt tu.



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?
Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps some inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Excerpt from “To the Moon”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translations/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Scattered, pole to starry pole,
glide Cynthia's mild beams,
whispering to the receptive soul
whatever moonbeams mean.

Bathing valley, hill and dale
with her softening light,
loosening from earth’s frigid chains
my restless heart tonight!

Over the landscape, near and far,
broods darkly glowering night;
yet welcoming as Friendship’s eye,
she, soft!, bequeaths her light.

Touched in turn by joy and pain,
my startled heart responds,
then floats, as Whimsy paints each scene,
to soar with her, beyond...

I mean Whimsy in the sense of both the Romantic Imagination and caprice. Here, I have the idea of Peter Pan flying off with Tinker Bell to Neverland.

My translation was informed by a translation by John S. Dwight.



Der Erlkönig (“The Elf King”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translations/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who rides tonight with the wind so wild?
A loving father, holding his child.
Please say the boy’s safe from all evil and harm!
He rests secure in his dear father’s arms.

My son, my son, what’s that look on your face?
Father, he’s there, in that dark, scary place!
The elfin king! With his dagger and crown!
Son, it’s only the mist, there’s no need to frown.

My dear little boy, you must come play with me!
Such marvelous games! We’ll play and be free!
Many bright flowers we'll gather together!
Son, why are you wincing? It’s only the weather.

Father, O father, how could you not hear
What the elfin king said to me, drawing so near?
Be quiet, my son, and pay “him” no heed:
It was only the wind gusts stirring the trees.

Come with me now, you're a fine little lad!
My daughters will kiss you, then you’ll be glad!
My daughters will teach you to dance and to sing!
They’ll call you a prince and give you a ring!

Father, please look, in the gloom, don’t you see
The dark elfin daughters keep beckoning me?
My son, all I can see and all I can say
Is the wind makes the grey willows sway.

Why stay with your father? He’s deaf, blind and dumb!
If you’re unwilling I’ll force you to come!
Father, he’s got me and won’t let me go!
The cruel elfin king is hurting me so!

At last struck with horror his father looks down:
His gasping son’s holding a strange golden crown!
Then homeward through darkness, all the faster he sped,
But cold in his arms, his dear child lay dead.



The Fisher
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The river swirled and rippled;
nearby an angler lay,
and watched his lure with a careless eye,
like any other day.
But as he watched in a strange half-dream,
he saw the waters part,
and from the river’s depths emerged
a maiden, or a ****.

A Lorelei, she sang to him
her strange, bewitching song:
“Which of my sisters would you snare,
with your human hands, so strong?
To make us die in scorching air,
ripped from our land, so clear!
Why not leave your arid land
And rest forever here?”

“The sun and lady-moon, they lave
their tresses in the main,
and find such cleansing in each wave,
they return twice bright again.
These deep-blue waters, fresh and clear,
O, feel their strong allure!
Wouldn’t you rather sink and drown
into our land, so pure?”

The water swirled and bubbled up;
it lapped his naked feet;
he imagined that he felt the touch
of the siren’s kisses sweet.
She sang to him of mysteries
in her soft, resistless strain,
till he sank into the water
and never was seen again.

My translation was informed by a translation by William Edmondstoune Aytoun and Theodore Martin.



Kennst du das Land (“Do You Know the Land”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do you know of the land where the bright lemons bloom?
Where the orange glows gold in the occult gloom?
Where the gentlest winds fan the palest blue skies?
Where the myrtles and laurels elegantly rise?



Excerpt from “Hassan Aga”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What whiteness shimmers, distant on the lea?
Could it be snow? Or is it swans we see?
Snow? Melted with a recent balmy day.
Swans? All departed, long since flown away.
Neither snow, nor swans! What can it be?
The tent of Hassan Aga, shining!
There the wounded warrior lies, repining.
His mother and sisters to his side have come,
But his shame-faced wife weeps for herself, at home.



Excerpt from “The Song of the Spirits over the Waters”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wind is water's
amorous pursuer:
the Wind, upswept,
heaves waves from their depths.
And you, mortal soul,
how you resemble water!
And a mortal’s Fate,
how alike the wind!

My translation was informed by a translation by John S. Dwight.



Excerpt from “One and All”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How the solitary soul yearns
to merge into the Infinite
and find itself once more at peace.
Rid of blind desire & the impatient will,
our restless thoughts and plans are stilled.
We yield our Selves, then awake in bliss.

My translation was informed by a translation by John S. Dwight.



Prometheus
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

obscure Your heavens, Zeus, with a nebulous haze!
and, like boys beheading thistles, decapitate oaks and alps.

yet leave me the earth with its rude dwellings
and my hut You didn’t build.
also my hearth, whose cheerful glow You envy.

i know nothing more pitiful under the sun than these vampiric godlings!
undernourished with insufficient sacrifices and airy prayers!

my poor Majesty, if not for a few fools' hopes,
those of children and beggars,
You would starve!

when i was a child, i didn't know up from down,
and my eye strayed erratically toward the sun strobing high above,
as if the heavens had ears to hear my lamentations,
and a heart like mine, to feel pity for the oppressed.

who assisted me when i stood alone against the Titans' insolence?
who saved me from slavery, or, otherwise, from death?
didn’t you handle everything yourself, my radiant heart?
how you shone then, so innocent and holy,
even though deceived and expressing thanks to a listless Entity above.

revere you, zeus? for what?
when did u ever ease my afflictions, or those of the oppressed?
when did u ever stanch the tears of the anguished, the fears of the frightened?
didn’t omnipotent Time and eternal Fate forge my manhood?

my masters and urs likewise?

u were deluded if u thought I would hate life
or flee into faraway deserts,
just because so few of my boyish dreams blossomed.

now here I sit, fashioning Humans in My own Image,
creating a Race like Myself,
who, for all Their suffering and weeping,
for all Their happiness and rejoicing,
in the end shall pay u no heed,
like Me!



Nähe des Geliebten (“Near His Beloved”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I think of you when the sun
shines softly on me;
also when the moon
silvers each tree.

I see you in the spirit
the shimmering dust resembles;
also at the stroke of twelve
when the night watchman trembles.

I hear you in the sighing
of the restless, surging seas;
also in the quiet groves
when everything’s at peace.

I am with you, though so far!
Yet I know you’re always near.
Oh what I'd yield, as sun to star,
to have you here!

Ich denke dein, wenn mir der Sonne Schimmer
Vom Meere strahlt;
Ich denke dein, wenn sich des Mondes Flimmer
In Quellen malt.

Ich sehe dich, wenn auf dem fernen Wege
Der Staub sich hebt;
In tiefer Nacht, wenn auf dem schmalen Stege
Der Wandrer bebt.

Ich höre dich, wenn dort mit dumpfem Rauschen
Die Welle steigt.
Im stillen Haine geh ich oft zu lauschen,
Wenn alles schweigt.

Ich bin bei dir, du seist auch noch so ferne.
Du bist mir nah!
Die Sonne sinkt, bald leuchten mir die Sterne.
O wärst du da!



Gefunden (“Found”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Into the woodlands,
alone, I went.
Seeking nothing,
my sole intent.

But I saw a flower
deep in the shade
gleaming like starlight
in a still glade.

I reached down to pluck it
when it shyly asked:
“Why would you snap me
so cruelly in half?”

So I dug up the flower,
by the roots and all,
then planted it gently
by the garden wall.

Now in a dark corner
where I planted the flower,
it blooms just as brightly
to this very hour.

Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin,
Und nichts zu suchen,
Das war mein Sinn.

Im Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn,
Wie Sterne leuchtend
Wie Äuglein schön.

Ich wollt es brechen,
Da sagt' es fein:
Soll ich zum Welken,
Gebrochen sein?

Ich grubs mit allen
Den Würzeln aus,
Zum Garten trug ichs
Am hübschen Haus.

Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort;
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.



Wandrers Nachtlied (“Wanderer’s Night Song”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
From the hilltops
comes peace;
through the treetops
scarcely the wind breathes.
Do you feel the lassitude touch you?
The little birds grow silent in the forest.
Wait, soon you’ll rest too.

2.
From the distant hilltops
comes peaceful repose;
through the swaying treetops
a calming wind blows.
Do you feel the lassitude touch you?
The birds grow silent in the forest.
Wait, soon you’ll rest too.

Über allen Gipfeln
ist Ruh’
in allen Wipfeln
spürest du
kaum einen Hauch.
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte, nur balde
ruhest du auch.



Wandrers Nachtlied (“Wanderer’s Night Song”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
You who descend from heaven,
calming all suffering and pain,
the one who doubly refreshes
those who are doubly disconsolate;
I’m so weary of useless contention!
Why all this pain and lust?
Sweet peace descending,
Come, oh, come into my breast!

2.
You who descend from heaven,
calming all suffering and pain,
the one who doubly refreshes
those who are doubly disconsolate;
I’m so **** tired of this muddle!
What’s the point of all this pain and lust?
Sweet peace,
Come, oh, come into my breast!

Der du von dem Himmel bist,
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,
Den, der doppelt elend ist,
Doppelt mit Erquickung füllest,
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede,
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!



ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.

These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?

Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!

Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!

Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!

Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by a strange, ancient reverie, ...
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!

One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...

Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.

I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!

What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!



To The Muse
by Friedrich Schiller
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not know what I would be,
without you, gentle Muse!,
but I’m sick at heart to see
those who disabuse.



GOETHE & SCHILLER XENIA EPIGRAMS

She says an epigram’s too terse
to reveal her tender heart in verse …
but really, darling, ain’t the thrill
of a kiss much shorter still?
―#2 from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There are more translations of the Xenia epigrams of Goethe and Schiller later on this page.



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
set to music by Johannes Brahms
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.

This poem was set to music by the German composer Johannes Brahms in what has been called its “the most sublime incarnation.” A celebrated recording of the song was made in 1958 by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Jörg Demus accompanying him on the piano.



Hannah Arendt was a Jewish-German philosopher and Holocaust survivor who also wrote poetry.

H.B.
for Hermann Broch
by Hannah Arendt
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Survival.
But how does one live without the dead?
Where is the sound of their lost company?
Where now, their companionable embraces?
We wish they were still with us.

We are left with the cry that ripped them away from us.
Left with the veil that shrouds their empty gazes.
What avails? That we commit ourselves to their memories,
and through this commitment, learn to survive.

I Love the Earth
by Hannah Arendt
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the earth
like a trip
to a foreign land
and not otherwise.
Even so life spins me
on its loom softly
into never-before-seen patterns.
Until suddenly
like the last farewells of a new journey,
the great silence breaks the frame.



Bertolt Brecht fled **** Germany along with Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and many other German intellectuals. So he was writing from bitter real-life experience.

The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht, a German poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged — he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!

Parting
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.
A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the "law" relentlessly pursue me.
We talk about the weather
and our eternal friendship's magic.
Anything else would be too bitter,
too tragic.

The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A Japanese carving hangs on my wall —
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not altogether unsympathetically, I observe
the bulging veins of its forehead, noting
the grotesque effort it takes to be evil.

Radio Poem
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, little box, held tightly
to me,
escaping,
so that your delicate tubes do not break;
carried from house to house, from ship to train,
so that my enemies may continue communicating with me
on land and at sea
and even in my bed, to my pain;
the last thing I hear at night, the first when I awake,
recounting their many conquests and my litany of cares,
promise me not to go silent all of a sudden,
unawares.



These are three English translations of Holocaust poems written in German by the Jewish poet Paul Celan. The first poem, "Todesfuge" in the original German, is one of the most famous Holocaust poems, with its haunting refrain of a German "master of death" killing Jews by day and writing "Your golden hair Margarete" by starlight. The poem demonstrates how terrible things can become when one human being is granted absolute power over other human beings. Paul Celan was the pseudonym of Paul Antschel. (Celan is an anagram of Ancel, the Romanian form of his surname.) Celan was born in Czernovitz, Romania in 1920. The son of German-speaking Jews, Celan spoke German, Romanian, Russian, French and understood Yiddish. During the Holocaust, his parents were deported and eventually died in **** labor camps; Celan spent eighteen months in a **** concentration camp before escaping.

Todesfuge ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Black milk of daybreak, we drink it come morning;
we drink it come midday; we drink it, come night;
we drink it and drink it.
We are digging a grave like a hole in the sky; there's sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, "Your golden hair Margarete …"
He writes poems by the stars, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they'll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you each morning;
we drink you at midday; we drink you at night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents, he writes …
he writes when the night falls, "Your golden hair Margarete …
Your ashen hair Shulamith …"
We are digging dark graves where there's more room, on high.
His screams, "You dig there!" and "Hey you, dance and sing!"
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
cries, "Hey you, dig more deeply! You others, keep dancing!"

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you each morning;
we drink you at midday, we drink you at night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, "Your golden hair Margarete …
Your ashen hair Shulamith." He toys with our lives.
He screams, "Play for me! Death's a master of Germany!"
His screams, "Stroke dark strings, soon like black smoke you'll rise
to a grave in the clouds; there's sufficient room for Jews there!"

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you at midnight;
we drink you at noon; Death's the master of Germany!
We drink you come evening; we drink you and drink you …
a master of Deutschland, with eyes deathly blue.
With bullets of lead our pale master will ****** you!
He writes when the night falls, "Your golden hair Margarete …"
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; he's a master of Germany …

your golden hair Margarete …
your ashen hair Shulamith.

O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I'm undermined by blood —
no longer seen,
enslaved by death.

Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else's eyes
may see yet see me,
though I'm blind,
here where you
deny me voice.

You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me —
even breath.



“To Young”
for Edward Young, the poet who wrote “Night Thoughts”
by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Die, aged prophet: your crowning work your fulcrum;
now tears of joy
tremble on angel-lids
as heaven extends its welcome.

Why linger here? Have you not already built, great Mover,
a monument beyond the clouds?
Now over your night-thoughts, too,
the pallid free-thinkers hover,

feeling there's prophecy amid your song
as it warns of the dead-awakening trump,
of the coming final doom,
and heaven’s eternal wisdom.

Die: you have taught me Death’s dread name, elide,
bears notes of joy to the ears of the just!
Yet remain my teacher still,
become my genius and guide.

My translation was informed by a translation by William Taylor.



Excerpts from “The Choirs”
by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dear Dream, which I must never behold fulfilled,
pale diaphanous Mist, yet brighter than orient day!,
float back to me, and hover yet again
before my swimming sight!

Do they wear crowns in vain, those who forbear
to recognize your heavenly portraiture?
Must they be encased in marble, one and all,
ere the transfiguration be wrought?

Yes! For would the grave allow, I’d always sing
with inspiration stringing the lyre,—
amid your Vision’s tidal joy,
my pledge for loftier verse.

Great is your power, my Desire! Few have ever known
how it feels to melt in bliss; fewer still have ever felt
devotion’s raptures rise
on sacred Music’s wing!

Few have trembled with joy as adoring choirs
mingled their hallowed songs of heartfelt praise
(punctuated by each awe-full pause)
with unseen choirs above!

On each arched eyelash, on each burning cheek,
the fledgling tear quivers; for they imagine the goal,—
each shimmering golden crown
where angels wave their palms.

Deep, strong, the song seizes swelling hearts,
never scorning the tears it imbues,
whether shrouding souls in gloom
or steeping them in holy awe.

Borne on the deep, slow sounds, now holy awe
descends. Myriad voices sweep the assembly,
blending their choral force,—
their theme, Impending Doom!

Joy, Joy! They can scarcely bear it!
The *****’s thunder roundly rolls,—
louder and louder, to the congregations’ cries,
till the temple also trembles.

Enough! I sink! The wave of worshipers bows
before the altar,—bows low to the earth;
they taste the communal cup,
then drink devoutly, deeply, still.

One day, when my bones rest beside this church
as the assembled worshipers sing their songs of praise,
the conscious grave shall acknowledge their vision
with heaves of sweet flowerets in bloom.

And on that morning, ringing through the rocks,
as hymns are sung in praise, O, joyous tune!,
I’ll hear—“He rose again!”
Vibrating through my tomb.

My translation was informed by a translation by William Taylor.



A Lonely Cot
by Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (1719-1803)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A lonely cot is all I own:
it stands on grass that’s never mown
beside a brook (it’s passing small),
near where bright frothing fountains fall.

Here a spreading beech lifts up its head
and half conceals my humble shed:
from winter winds my sole retreat
and refuge from the summer’s heat.

In the beech’s boughs the nightingale
sweetly sings her plaintive tale:
so sweetly, passing rustics stray
with loitering steps to catch her lay!

Sweet blue-eyed maid with hair so fair,
my heart's desire! my fondest care!
I hurry home—How late the hour!
Come share, sweet maid, my sheltering bower!



Excerpts from “Song”
by Johann Georg Jacobi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Friend, tell me where the violet fled,
so lately gaily blowing?
That once perfumed fair Flora’s tread,
its choicest scents bestowing?
Swain, give up verse and hang your head:
the violet lies dead!

Friend, what became of the blushing rose,
the pride of the blossoming morning?
The garland every groom bestows
upon his blushing darling?
Swain, give up verse and hang your head:
the rose lies dead!

And say, what of the village maid,
so late my cot adorning?
The one I assayed in our secret glade,
as pale and fair as the morning?
Swain, give up verse and hang your head:
the erstwhile maid lies dead!

Friend, what became of the gentle swain
who sang, in rural measures,
of the lovely violet, blushing rose,
and girls like exotic treasures?
Maid, close his book and hang your head:
the swain lies dead!



Dunkles zu sagen (“Expressing the Dark”)
by Ingeborg Bachmann, an Austrian poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I strum the strings of life and death
like Orpheus
and in the beauty of the earth
and in your eyes that instruct the sky,
I find only dark things to say.

Untitled

The dark shadow
I followed from the beginning
led me into the deep barrenness of winter.
—Ingeborg Bachmann, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller

#2 - Love Poetry

She says an epigram’s too terse
to reveal her tender heart in verse ...
but really, darling, ain’t the thrill
of a kiss much shorter still?
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#5 - Criticism

Why don’t I openly criticize the man? Because he’s a friend;
thus I reproach him in silence, as I do my own heart.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#11 - Holiness

What is holiest? This heart-felt love
binding spirits together, now and forever.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#12 - Love versus Desire

You love what you have, and desire what you lack
because a rich nature expands, while a poor one contracts.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#19 - Nymph and Satyr

As shy as the trembling doe your horn frightens from the woods,
she flees the huntsman, fainting, uncertain of love.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#20 - Desire

What stirs the ******’s heaving ******* to sighs?
What causes your bold gaze to brim with tears?
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#23 - The Apex I

Everywhere women yield to men, but only at the apex
do the manliest men surrender to femininity.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#24 - The Apex II

What do we mean by the highest? The crystalline clarity of triumph
as it shines from the brow of a woman, from the brow of a goddess.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#25 -Human Life

Young sailors brave the sea beneath ten thousand sails
while old men drift ashore on any bark that avails.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#35 - Dead Ahead

What’s the hardest thing of all to do?
To see clearly with your own eyes what’s ahead of you.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#36 - Unexpected Consequence

Friends, before you utter the deepest, starkest truth, please pause,
because straight away people will blame you for its cause.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

#41 - Earth vs. Heaven

By doing good, you nurture humanity;
but by creating beauty, you scatter the seeds of divinity.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Unholy Trinity
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Man has three enemies:
himself, the world, and the devil.
Of these the first is, by far,
the most irresistible evil.

True Wealth
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is more to being rich
than merely having;
the wealthiest man can lose
everything not worth saving.

The Rose
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose merely blossoms
and never asks why:
heedless of her beauty,
careless of every eye.

The Rose
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose lack "reasons"
and merely sways with the seasons;
she has no ego
but whoever put on such a show?

Eternal Time
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eternity is time,
time eternity,
except when we
are determined to "see."

Visions
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our souls possess two eyes:
one examines time,
the other visions
eternal and sublime.

Godless
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

God is absolute Nothingness
beyond our sense of time and place;
the more we try to grasp Him,
The more He flees from our embrace.

The Source
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Water is pure and clean
when taken at the well-head:
but drink too far from the Source
and you may well end up dead.

Ceaseless Peace
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unceasingly you seek
life's ceaseless wavelike motion;
I seek perpetual peace, all storms calmed.
Whose is the wiser notion?

Well Written
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Friend, cease!
Abandon all pretense!
You must yourself become
the Writing and the Sense.

Worm Food
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No worm is buried
so deep within the soil
that God denies it food
as reward for its toil.

Mature Love
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

New love, like a sparkling wine, soon fizzes.
Mature love, calm and serene, abides.

God's Predicament
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

God cannot condemn those with whom he would dwell,
or He would have to join them in hell!

Clods
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A ruby
is not lovelier
than a dirt clod,
nor an angel
more glorious
than a frog.



Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."

“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?

Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.

But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
—shrouded in secrecy—
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?

The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”

But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel—
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.

Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.

Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?

Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.

Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.

Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
—and ultimately, for ourselves.

Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012)



“Totentanz”
by H. Distler
loose translation/ interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Erster Spruch:
Lass alles, was du hast, auf dass du alles nehmst!
Verschmäh die Welt, dass du sie tausendfach bekömmst!
Im Himmel ist der Tag, im Abgrund ist die Nacht.
Hier ist die Dämmerung: Wohl dem, der's recht betracht!

First Aphorism:
Leave everything, that you may take all!
Scorn the world, that you may receive it a thousandfold!
In the heavens it is day, in the abyss it is night.
Here it is twilight: Blessed is the one who comprehends!

First Aphorism:
Leave everything, that you may take all!
Scorn the world, seize it like a great ball!
In the heavens it is day, in the abyss, night.
Understand if you can: Here it is twilight!

Der Tod: Zum Tanz, zum Tanze reiht euch ein:
Kaiser, Bischof, Bürger, Bauer,
arm und ***** und gross und klein,
heran zu mir! Hilft keine Trauer.
Wohl dem, der rechter Zeit bedacht,
viel gute Werk vor sich zu bringen,
der seiner Sünd sich losgemacht -
Heut heisst's: Nach meiner Pfeife springen!

Death: To the dance, to the dance, take your places:
emperor, bishop, townsman, farmer,
poor and rich, big and small,
come to me! Grief helps nothing.
Blessed is the one who deems the time right
to do many good deeds,
to rid himself of his sins –
Today you must dance to my tune!

Zweiter Spruch:
Mensch, die Figur der Welt vergehet mit der Zeit.
Was trotz'st du dann so viel auf ihre Herrlichkeit?

Second Aphorism:
Man, the world’s figure decays with time.
Why do you go on so much about her glory?

Der Kaiser: O Tod, dein jäh Erscheinen
friert mir das Mark in den Gebeinen.
Mussten Könige, Fürsten, Herren
sich vor mir neigen und mich ehren,
dass ich nun soll ohn Gnade werden
gleichwie du, Tod, ein Schleim der Erden?
Der ich den Menschen Haupt und Schirmer -
du machst aus mir ein Speis' der Würmer.

Emperor:
Oh Death, your sudden appearance
freezes the marrow in my bones.
Did kings, princes and gentlemen
bow down before me and honor me,
that I should I become, without mercy,
just like you, Death, slime of the earth?
I was my people’s leader and protector –
you made me a meal for worms.

Der Tod: Herr Kaiser, warst du der Höchste hier,
voran sollst du tanzen neben mir.
Dein war das Schwert der Gerechtigkeit,
zu schlichten den Streit, zu lindern das Leid;
doch Ruhm- und Ehrsucht machten dich blind,
sahst nicht dein eigen grosse Sünd.
Drum fällt dir mein Ruf so schwer in den Sinn. -
Halt an, Bischof, den Tanz beginn!

Death:
Emperor, you were the highest here,
thus you shall dance next to me.
Yours was the sword of justice,
to settle disputes and alleviate suffering;
but your obsession with fame and glory blinded you,
you failed to see your own immense sinfulness.
Hence my reputation is so difficult for you to comprehend. –
Halt, Bishop, the dance begins!

Dritter Spruch:
Wann du willst gradeswegs ins ew'ge Leben gehn,
so lass die Welt und dich zur linken Seite stehn!

Third Aphorism:
If you would enter directly into eternal life,
leave the world and yourself by the wayside!

Die Tage reihen sich,
in zu schneller Abfolge,
in zu vielen Reihenfolgen
Aneinander, auseinander
zu Löchern in meinem Kopf.

Eindrücke verschwimmen und verwischen,
Farben und Gesichter vermischen sich
Der Regenbogen am Himmel gestern ist heute schon weiß.
Ein Spektrum umgekehrt.
Namen sind Laute geworfen gegen den Wind,
gerade noch gesprochen und schon sind sie verflogen.
Wer warst du und wann
warst du gewesen?
Ich weiß nicht mehr wer ich war,
zu welcher Zeit an welchem Ort.

Weißt du,
ich spreche vom Ende der Zeit,
praktisch,
du von ihrer Unerreichbarkeit,
herrlich
Wer waren wir gewesen?

Gerade noch erlebt,
gerade noch gelebt
und schon sind wir vergangen,
so bleiben wir,
vergessen.

Endlich.