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Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
i put the index and ******* of my right
hand... the tips... in a V (5) shape...
and i see a third eye...

then i count the number of holes in my body...
two nostrils...
one mouth... 3...
two eyes... 5...
two ears 7...
                    one ***... ha ha... one *******
/ **** duct...       grand total? 9...
what does it in "mean"? P...

i've returned to the land of jokers...
seriously... i never appreciated Greek philosophy...
ancient Greek philosophy:
because? there was no Byzantine philosophy:
well... there was...
the New Testament...
which had it's ******* pride whitewashed
by the Turks sacking Constantinople...

see... i don't believe in any Judeo-Christian
ethnical trap craps...
i don't... it's a load of dog-whistles and
bigger dog *******...

i believe the New Testament was crafted
as a Greco-Judeo "conspiracy theory" against
the Roman Empire...
i'm actually thrilled that my heart
entertains this idea...
why else would the Greeks keep the notion
of empire alive far longer than the Latins?
they would become Byzantines and not Greeks?
they would... morph the Glagolitic script
into Cyrillic?

mein gott! and i'm sort of like an Arab...
the Teutonic / northern crusades against
the last pagans of Europe:
who "we" coupled with with the ******-Lithuanian
Commonwealth... **** me... "we" probably
even employed the use of Tartars to defeat
the iron-numb-skulls on horseback...

i think i'm lucky: i haven't won the lottery:
but: boy... i have...
the historical lottery...
    ZERO post-colonial guilt tripping...
last time i heard: it took **** Germany &
Soviet Russia longer to dismantle Poland
than it took **** Germany to conquer France...

eh?! the memory of Napoleon went missing?!
maybe the French girls just love to ****
foreigners... maybe they're easily approachable...
i'll blow a bubble-gun at them...
surely they'll submit... ha ha...

no no... i just did a U-turn today...
i became drunk on my own "intellect" / memory...
i remember buying this book as a teenager...
Tao... huh? and this one passage stuck with me:
a categorical imperative unlike any
German thinking:

the best way to aid the world:
is to forget the world
   and for the world to forget you...

it might have been a hardcover exemplar of what
Tao was about... but it didn't cite anyone...
only yesterday i was listening to a podcast
by Carefree Wandering... this Barbarossa shackled
by / in Shanghai...

a name dropped...  Zhoung Zhou... ergo?
the Zhoungzi...
     it was a really hot day today... today was a really
hot day... i "forgot" about painting the fence...
instead i did the ironing inside... shirt off...
then i prepped the bbq...
   turns out... my female cat likes music...
she loves the Red Hot Chilli Peppers...
  i love the Red Hot Chilli Peppers...
     **** me: i hate the Beatles and i hate the Rolling Stones...
to me there's only one FAB 4...

i'm like a giddy... chirpy sparrow singing...
albeit with a poker face...
when i worked security watching them live...
but with an element of retrospect...
because... that wasn't me at the gig:
that's me ironing shirts...
and watching my VERONIYA relaxing
with the music being played...

there are two greatest compliments in this world...
another person likes your cooking skills...
yeah: they actually eat the food you cooked
for them...
and?
an animal enjoys the music you're listening to...
the animal is not freaked out by the noise
that's the transcendence of a tap-dripping tap 'ap ap ap...

i don't know which is better... probably
the latter...
            you know: when you listen to music...
have a memory of a gig... you worked security on...
then you're ironing shirts...
and your female Maine **** is not ******* off...
and you're sort of: all "itchy": but it's not an "itch"...
it's a "feeling": a feels...
            i was born with it...
                    when i was younger and my father ******
off to England to better our economic prospects and
i didn't see him from age 4 through to 8...
my mother through the age of 6 through to 8...
grandparents... two dogs...
Bella... Axel...
                            Joseph and Hella...

i'd get gifts sent back to me...
a Nintendo this and that...
        i was generous... i shared...
but when i shared...
i had this numbing-excitement sensation...
whenever i witnessed people using my "stuff"...
i can't explain it... it just felt much better than
an *******...

like the case of scent in the film Perfume...
i can't capture this feeling... this tip-of-the-fingers
sensation...
excited mingling with numbing...

**** me... Veroniya loves AROUND THE WORLD...
it has become my new favourite
Red Hot Chilli Pepper song...
and they are my "peers": i hate the Beatles...
i hate the Rolling Stones...
but? i love Bob Dylan...
   best way to appreciate Bobby?
on a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow...
overnight...

Metallica or Godsmack... once upon a time...
the former... but these days?
the latter...

that's where i parked "my horse":
because i wasn't going to unwind with ego-tripping
***** pageant mechanisms
for allowing competition:
why is it that all the pretty girls
become prostitutes...

please tell me it's untrue: but... it's true...
all the pretty women become prostitutes...
all the "ugly" men are leftovers...
shadows... but hum in on some beached whales
and it's more than likely that she
will replicate... itch... ooze... ugh...
fair enough...
      i need my mind to be crisp...
i need to be getting numb and drunk with
the sages of Chinas... yeah... the plural...
from 600 years before Chrissy..

         i'll blame it on the fact that it was a hot day...
or i'll blame it on... ****...
i got intellectually drunk today...
i knew about Tao a long long time ago...
but i was never told the pinpoint
the anti-Confucian element...
really?! ZHUANGZI?!

                         that helps...
   i never liked ancient Greek thinking to begin
with...
            German thinking? yes...
esp. correlating an antithesis to **** ideology...
i loved that part... Heidegger above Beethoven...

the dead rest: the living live as if resting...
the dead are NOT: at rest...
the dead are resting...
while the living are simply living and resting
at the same time...

i have made a 180 return to to Tao...
today i became drunk from the intellectual
play on what could be a...
play on words: more... a play on word-idea...

who did i support?
in the Wimbledon final?
i am an anti-racist... but when i heard....
she's playing tennis for the Arabs...
for the Blacks... blah blah...
i switched off... please... sport?!
no politics...
   ******* of narrative..
  you just destroyed Afghanistan...
   Iraq... Libya...
        why do you suddenly summon
a care for Ukraine?!

                                  *******!
nahts steht hunger starr in unsern traum!
ja... ich... hassen mein haben menschen!
das letzte サムライ....

              alle letzte! ah! was ist verloren?!
beste zu tanz! beste zu tanz!
beste zu singen!
             mein herz... mein: werden...
mein: etwas...
               mein: letzte hoffung und liebe...

kommen sie mein am wenigsten
      wollen von ein kind...

         mein kind... mein kind...
mein einfrieren luft...
                     mein: hämmern erde...
das tanzen freuer...
        mit wasser: irgendetwas...

shift shaft: shuffle... SH...
wechsel... welle... mischen...

                   das ist gut?!
                       men born for merely a grave...
menschen geboren für
    nur ein graB...
                             nein nein: niet: ein sharpened S...
you saw it! ein B'eh!
graB...
                
                              i think i will die a happy man...
i think i will die a happy man because i
anticipate so many people dying unhappy...
the guilt-tripping-gripping...
i wish i lived a long time ago...
i wish i lived years ahead of stated times...
me?!
i'm trying out Daoism...
   or rather... returning to it...
           this be the zenith:

i must stress it in German:

dies sein die zenit! das ende...
                         the wind fills the pillows...
while my thoughts clamour for hiking
clouds!
Max Neumann Mar 2020
die flüsse aus schatten
spenden den vergessenen
wasser

isoliert von allen
lebenden um zu
tanzen

ihre silhouetten hinter
vorhängen, aufflackerndem, eine
chance

für die lebenden:
schärfen und fokussieren des
blickes

gib mir alles zurück
meine fürsorge die umarmungen
denk

nicht du würdest mich verlassen
ein dickes seil würd' ich nehmen
doch

alles zählt jetzt: keine abneigung
zuneigung die flüsse aus schatten erreichen
uns

wir können ihn nicht entkommen sie
sie sind so nahe
zahlreiche

bebilderungen unendlicher schlupflöcher
kinder erwachsene treiben in flüssen aus
schatten

der letzte vorhang
das letzte kerzenflackern
die letzte silhouette

"wir entkommen ihnen nicht" rufst du
"keine bange" brülle ich durchs rauschen
flüsse

wir werden zu einer kreuzung aus
wolf & löwin eine einheit eine
flüssigkeit

letzte echos stimmen und schatten
die flüsse verbleiben
die flüsse verbleiben
Heute ist ein guter Tag.
Jane Doe Jun 2014
If I describe to you this dream of mine,
could I distill sorrow into drops of sweetness?

Let me write you one last story:

High summer, our heroes are apart but speeding
together at 250 km/h
(the average speed of the ICE 599 Berlin - Stuttgart)

Image the sweetest, deepest blue sky day of your life,
how the warm bath of the air flows over your skin,
and that is this day.

Her face is pressed against the train window.
She wears a new blue dress that matches heaven,
her hair is a halo of golden sunshine
and everywhere she smells a
field of honeysuckles.

She’s holding a scrap of paper
on which the names of several
German towns are written in pen
(the stops where she will stand
waiting on a platform looking west
towards you)
She is folding and refolding it in her lap.

And you, buying cheap train station coffee
at a kiosk because you don’t want her to know
that you barely slept last night.
Willing the golden face of the clock in the lobby
to speed faster towards noon.

You wait on the platform, hands in your pockets,
contemplating another cigarette (your fifth or sixth)
Wie Vorfruede!

An older man breaks custom and lightly asks
if you have a Liebste arriving on this train.
You smile that closed-mouth smile of yours
and he nods then falls
quiet to his own reveries.

She drums her fingers on her knees,
unfolding the paper one last time,
and asks the women beside her,
wo sind wir?

The city comes into view, greengold trees,
People walking along the river,
old stone arches of the train station.
Everything becomes very quiet; she steps
down and looks left then right.

The train heaves a heavy sigh and rolls on,
the breeze of its wake rushing first through her hair
and then through yours.

Every desperate song and poem and
cry in the night are filtered back to sweet water.
The winter has never been and will never come back,
the birds sing of you.

If everything that is dreamed or told of and never chosen
exists in parallel shades set side by side,
than in some world you and I are walking towards one
another through the dappled summer light
forever.

The End.
Er will nichts und niemand
bis auf seine liebliche Verlobte.
Er möchte ja nichts mehr
als mit ihr Liebe zu machen.

Sie will nichts und niemand
bis auf ihren vermisste Verlobte.
Sie hat keine Lust je länger zu warten
um wieder so nah zu ihm zu sein.

Die Schöne seines Lebens
ist so weit weg gewesen,
doch als ihre Lippen aufeinander prallen,
jede schlimme Dinge werden weg fallen.

Wann diese jugendliche Lieber
wieder zusammen sind,
nichts wird sie trennen
ausser ihre Haut und Schweiß.

Sie werden ja zusammen schlafen,
doch wird wenig Schlaf bekommen;
sie lieben einander weit zu viel
die letzte Monaten gelitten zu haben  
ohne solchem vollständige Ausgleich.
Lovers like to make Love
-
He wants nothing and no one
save for his lovely Fiancee.
He would like nothing more
than to make love with her.

She wants nothing and no one
save for her missing Fiance.
She has no desire to wait any longer
to be so close to him again.

The Beauty of his Life
has been so far away,
but when their lips collide,
every bad thing will fall away.

When these youthful Lovers
finally are together again,
nothing shall separate them
except their skin and sweat.

They will indeed sleep together,
though little sleep will be had;
they love each other far too much
to have suffered the last Months
without such thorough compensation.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
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.

Original text:

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.

Originally published by Measure

Keywords/Tags: German, translation, sonnet, Rainer Marie Rilke, autumn, day, summer, sundial, sundials, meadow, meadows, wind, winds, fruit, fruits, sweetness, wine, house, alone, loneliness, alienation, letters, friends, pathways, roads, lanes, leaves



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?



The next two poems are my modern English translations of Rainer Maria Rilke’s First and Second Elegies. These are the opening elegies in a collection commonly called the “Duino Elegies” because Rilke began composing them at Duino Castle, near Trieste, Italy, in 1912.



Rilke’s First Elegy
by Rainer 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?



Rilke’s 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.



HERMANN HESSE

This is my modern English translation of the poem "Stages" by the great German poet Hermann Hesse from his novel "The Glass Bead Game."

Stages
by Hermann Hesse
from his novel "The Glass Bead Game"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As every flower wilts and every youth
must wilt and exit life from a curtained stage,
so every virtue—even our truest truth—
blooms some brief time and cannot last forever.
Since life may summons death at any age
we must prepare for death’s obscene endeavor,
meet our end with courage and without remorse,
forego regret and hopes of some reprieve,
embrace death’s end, as life’s required divorce,
some new beginning, calling us to live.
Thus let us move, serene, beyond our fear,
and let no sentiments detain us here.

The Universal Spirit would not chain us,
but elevates us slowly, stage by stage.
If we demand a halt, our fears restrain us,
caught in the webs of creaturely defense.
We must prepare for imminent departure
or else be bound by foolish “permanence.”
Death’s hour may be our swift deliverance,
from which we speed to fresher, newer spaces,
and Life may summons us to bolder races.
So be it, heart! Farewell, and adieu, then!

Keywords/Tags: Hermann Hesse, translation, German, English, life, death, stage, stages, truth, flower, wilt, youth, flower, blooms, time, age, courage, hope, hopes, fear, spirit, god, space, spaces, heart, farewell
Jonas Feb 2021
Aufstehen, von der Sonne geweckt

der erste Kaffe steht bereit
Katzen die sich in Gärten strecken
du liest ein Buch, das tu ich auch
die Hängematte, schwingt zwischen den Tannen
Tauben zirpen, Zickarden gurren
dein Eis schmilzt und tropft
sonnengebleichte Haare steht in die Richtung des Windes
braungebrannte Haut schwitzig, später salzverkrustet
Sonnencremduft, an uns
Pommes rotweiß an den Fingern, klebrig
die Sonne blendet, ist  schon okay
Wellenrauschen, tobende Kinder kreischen
Sand zwischen den Zehen
du neben mir auf dem Handtuch
gemeinsam dösen
gehen wir nochmal rein?
Gösser, der letzte Schluck
ein bisschien zu warm
Dämmerung Barfuß auf dem Fahrrad
Lagerfeuerrauch in Augen und Nase,
blaue Flamme Knack zisch
weinrotgefärbte Lippen, Zungen so schwer wie der Kopf
Zeitlos

Bis morgen!
silvervi Dec 2023
Pseudogedichte
Mag ich
Immer wieder
Schreib' ich
Nehm mich selbst nicht ernst
Versteck' ich meine Wahrheit
Verstecke meinen Schmerz.

Will Menschen zum Lachen bringen,
Will Freude in sie auswringen,
Die letzte, die ich habe
Nur heute noch,
Einer der letzten Tage.

So *******es.
In mir weint es.
Es schreit -
Die Angst vorm Tod.

Wie fühlten sich die Verurteilten?
Diejenigen, die wussten,
Bald werden sie tot?

Hätten sie noch körperliche Schmerzen zu beklagen?
Hatten sie noch Schwere auf dem Herzen?
Ich frage mich das
Wahrscheinlich umsonst.
Matthew Mefford Apr 2014
The story is inspired by the song Das Letzte Streichholz by Oomph!.

This is not a nice subject, and at times may be disturbing. Read at your own risk.

She hides from her father, afraid for her life,
Huddled under her bed, she waits for his wife,
Maybe this time she'll talk him down, make him go away,
But sometimes she likes it, like morbid foreplay.

She's been beaten and bruised since she came to their home,
She's blankly walked through the days, lost and alone,
'There must be a way out,' she thought as she cried,
'But if I tell anyone, I sign up to die.'

The man stalked through the house, searching each room,
Poor Lumen stayed hidden, and stared at the moon,
The light was so lovely, it seemed a strong source of hope,
'Maybe it could lead me, at least help me cope.'

The footsteps grew louder, they started to hiss,
She picked up her favorite doll and gave it a kiss,
As the ******* kicked in the door, she held her doll close,
'I'm done with this place,' she thought as she rose.

Tears staining her face, her eyes glowing red,
She slowly bent over her neatly made bed,
He reached for her blouse and took it off slow,
"I hope you enjoy it, just **** me and go."

She whimpered as he moved her hand to his leg,
And screamed when he told her to grab it and beg,
A wide, wicked smile made her sore stomach churn,
'I'll take him to Hell, I'll be glad that he burns.'

He came and he went and left her depressed,
She winced as she cleaned and bandaged her chest,
His teeth had gone through and drawn crimson blood,
'I swear that sick **** will hit the floor with a thud.'

She sat on her bed and tried to just think,
It didn't come easy, but she started to sink,
She fell deeper and deeper into the sorest of sleeps,
'At least I'm free through the wonder of dreams.'

She woke in the morning to the snap of a lock,
She curled in the corner and started to rock,
His wife came inside and asked how it went,
"How can you do this, you sickening *****?"

Her hand came down hard and bruised her shoulder,
"Listen you ingrate, you'll be glad when you're older,
"He'll show you the ropes, make sure that you're ready,
"You'll be there in no time, you have to ride steady."

His wife left the room with a sinful laugh,
Every word that she says will earn a new match,
It was this day that Lumen would break,
'I've had it, I'm ready, my life is at stake.'

She quietly moved to the end of the hall,
She heard his wife yell, this should be a good stall,
She took the last match from her father's secret place,
'This is ending today, I hope Hell has space.'

She struck the match and gasped at the flame,
Happy, she ends the the growing, numb pain,
The house went up quickly, they were trapped in the fire,
'Finally, I'm free to live and aspire.'
Marie Nov 2020
Ich zünde für dein Wohlergehn,
das Licht der Liebe an
Mit deinem Herzen wirst du sehn
wie hell es leuchten kann

Es dringt durch alle Poren
bis in die letzte Zelle
Du bist wie neu geboren
durch diese Lichterquelle

Mit unverzagtem Mut
und unbeugsamer Kraft
steigst du aus dieser Glut
voll purem Lebenssaft

Streckst deine Flügel aus
und schüttelst alle Sorgen
ins Dunkel weit hinaus
fühlst dich im Licht geborgen
Es wird dich immer schützen
vor großer Not und Pein
oder
zumindest stützen
sollt’s doch mal anders sein
Snow Apr 2019
nur ein blick versprichst du dir
nur ein blick
du schaust rüber und Minuten fesseln dich an diesem einzigen blick
dein lachen verstummt
und die merkst wie die Erinnerungen in deinem Kopf herumsummen

all die jahre  für nichts, wo ist die zeit hin, als du sagtest, dass du mich liebst
du sagtest wir seien für immer bestimmt, doch weißt du nicht, dass ein für immer nicht existiert
du versuchtest mich zu heilen, doch bemerktest nicht, dass ich nicht kaputt bin
denkst ich würde mir keine mühe geben glücklich zu sein
denkst ich wöllte kein teil dieser Gesellschaft mehr sein
doch ich muss dich enttäuschen

ich trage das letzte stück Hoffnung mit mir ***, als wäre es ein Souvenir
trotz allem was geschah lasse ich sie nicht los
doch du, du siehst nur meine schwächen

nur ein blick und alles kam zurück
es war doch nur ein blick ?
war es doch nur ein blick ?
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
if you're a "thinker" - you don't require a "freedom" of speech - by freedom of speech i mean: the lacklustre of the "freedom" to think... how the two seem unconvincing... oh my my my, what a waste of time; sooner the pistachio ice-cream worth my name, than the folowing quest for question; thank **** poland, thank, ****, poland, the land, who "cherished" both **** germany, and communist russia... seem regurgitating islam... ooh sorry, pooh bear said, what in wahabi? graf einmal! graf zweimal! nein, halt zählen... schädel beklagen die kürbislachen von oktober; die letzte reste von ein tag.

may i introduce some biblical command?
and i ask doubly -
what's the difference between the "devil"
that asks within *temptation
-
    compared with the devil that asks within
the confines of charm?
does not one leave man with the notion
of free will, and the other with the omnipotent
god?
who beyond man, be indistinguishable
to keep devil or god away from parodical
laments...
          if the devil does tempt,
and if a god does charm...
                who's will equals who's?
that the devil marks his will
by the unus autem -
       and that god...
                omni autem -
                      that the devil rather charm,
and god play the puppet of a devil
with the serpentine of tease, and ask,
and the lost question of temptation being
asked.... not i, nor anyone else,
be believed with a logic of rhyme...
charm forthright provides
unfulfilled truths -
             but you tempt with
the provision of fulfilling outright lies;
seems i wrote enough truth,
that i've forgotten the original german
              that might be worth recitation.

*and how i love my terrible germaniac...
   at least a part of me still feels
insensible, as to leverage the human
   cruelty of imperfection.
Michael R Burch Nov 2024
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!
These are modern English translations of German poems by Michael R. Burch.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2021
videos that begin: and later conclude with the flow
of: unscripted freedoms...
get on my nerves: get on my ******* and cranium
like an itch i just can't scratch...
freedom with too much impulse:
but not enough premeditation...
               so i turned off... they were a massive downer...
i returned to just... listening to music...
scribbling or rather: chicken scratching...
for all that thought allows when coupled
with writing...
   speaking will never grant...
  even if you couple it with war drums and
mantras of the millionth count of man...
sit under a make-shift canopy when it's
raining... the sound is electric for a while...
mesmerizing even...
like a little trickle of "orchestra"...
but then again: the sound of falling rain
is hardly Bach's polyphony...
but it also isn't the sound of a waterfall...
or the sound of the sea and its barrage of the shore
with its waves of stampeding horses...
nor is it... a tap trickling a rat-tat-tat on the sink
basin coupled with the humming
of the refrigerator murmur for the sake of ghostly
ambiance come the zenith of night:
when even burglars are asleep...
it's not a sound of slosh / slush of throwing a bucket's
worth of water from a height...
i too would like to imagine the sound
of a falling chandelier... not no...
perhaps throwing out... a bucket's load of crushed
ice on... glass... or a mirror... or a sheet of metal...
copper or iron? any difference?
i bet there's a difference on lead...
or aluminium...
but from under a makeshift canopy
to out in the open...
   a bewildering absence of "orchestra"...
just a teasing at silence...
                   no focus point for a collection of water...
evenly spread: like too little butter spread
over too much bread... you can still see the
Himalayan mountains inverted as holes
on a slice of ciabatta... couple that with a slice
of Swiss cheese and you're bound to see...
the lost lakes of the moon...
i suppose Mars was inhabitable once...
since... the earth wasn't...
and as the sun gradually cooled...
         the moon was a habitat once...
and once the sun cools even further...
Venus might be a welcome habitat...
           an argument to counter man's desire to explore
space... burning cow farts into a vacuum...
or dead dinosaur-burn to boot...
stand outside all space and time:
supposedly that's philosophy...
i suppose i'm not going to make scrambled eggs
with my brain while i'm at it...
i return to my heart of stone...
   i return to a fullness of being alone...
now that i managed to get both a haircut and
a beard trim in one afternoon
i see hungry girls eyeing me up while
i cycle... back lacerated by sweat...
     somehow it feels that during the summer:
people are supposed to fall in love...
**** at night in the forest or something...
a 35 year old man will spot a girl who just finished
her GCSEs or A-levels while all the other minors
are still dressed in school uniforms...
if this is what 35 year old men did when
we were the same age as these girls...
i suppose when we were their age: we weren't cruel
enough...
i'd love to see a colt get a stab at it to later
see the plunge into disappointment...
as ever: only the prostitutes seem the most beautiful
of women...
why is that? mandible... or... skin like leather:
well worn?
not some holy grail: mothering types where
you invest in "prodigy" or... "dynasty"...
assured that... your woman will not be touched...
fiddled by some better fiddler than you...
i suppose owning a pedigree dog is less hassle...
why not skip all that...
go straight for the obvious...
hassle with this... that... and the other...
- i was buying a gift for my father for father's day...
an obligation that shortened my savings
to visiting that godsend of a ******* of a *****
by £34.99... i got bored of buying him
whiskey for his birthday...
he has driving glasses... but nothing to walk in...
stop squinting!
in a magic moment of mania i tried about
a dozen pairs in the space of... 3 minutes...
not enough mirrors... if i had three mirrors two work
with would have put on those dozen pair of sunglasses
in circa a minute...
- at the unisex salon i was coerced into chatting
with my "hairdresser" Nicki...
we talked about her father... 75 now...
who owns over a dozen motorcycles...
he had this Harley phase...
he's going camping this weekend...
there are supposed to be lightning storms...
we never had a car...
on a bike with a buggy...
my mother died when she was 43...
he found a second lady... she too died...
i think that motorcycle saved him...
investments... one is over 100 years old...
probably comes to over £30,000 in worth...
       - is it me... or do... women... barely recognise
the worth of something?
or perhaps time is... beyond measure for them?
i had my eyes closed while i was sitting
before this grand mirror...
i don't want to see myself...
   it felt like "it" wasn't supposed to think...
pay attention to... what she was saying...
forget the Jezebel's ******* and fixate your
concentration on this... blonde bombshell
cutting your hair: and remember the one
car her father owned...
memory of the name of a thing...
oh sure... i have a memory of things...
my father owned a Makita drill...
my grandfather owned a KOPERNIKUS IX
set of protractors and ****
by E. O. Richter & Co.
he was also a philatelist...
           i inherited a grand collection...
   but he didn't indeed invest in macho:
obedience objects of bypassing self-generation
of momentum...
he didn't own a car... he preferred a bicycle...
a bus... i do too...
i guess i'm more of my grandfather than
i am my father... after all... my father wasn't
present when i was 4 through to 8...
the great brain-drain / labour-drain from the east
to the west after the collapse of soviet empire...
"coincidentally": the collapse of production
of goods in the west overall...
and metallurgy...
smart jobs now... or ***** jobs tending to...
children that will be... literate bound
to menial johns worth of jobs...
would have been better to keep them:
illiterate... quite frankly...
it's not quiete enough to just quit... right about: now...
quintessential... the goods coming in...
or the export of: Samsara Usury...
it's terrible that i forgot the name of
the car they drove...
kwa-yet... phonetically: still English...
oh the natives...
i could just cuddle them with pillow!

- so while Nicky finished off my hair
i began to take form...
to the Turk for the trimming of the beard...
i still think he ****** it up a little bit...
my chin and neckline isn't exactly
right angle: L inverted...
i need longer hairs at the tip of my chin
than longer hairs that protrude from my neck...
but he used a trimmer that had a whiff
of brothel i.e. jack daniels...
and he used a brush with some...
baby bottom powder...
   eh... if i don't like how the regrowth will
look... i'll... bask... in... a week's worth
of... returning to a joy of shaving...
god... i think i've had *** more times
than i've shaved my face in the past half-decade...

i have to write this in old deutsche:

writing is less intrusive than speech...
there's no premeditation in speaking...
writing is an extension of thought:
it's not an invitation to speak...

(in german, utilizing english grammar)

schreiben ist geringer aufdringlich als rede...
da ist nein vorsatz im reden...
shreiben ist ein gedanke(-)erweiterung (auf)
es ist nicht ein einladung zu spreche...

ol' Nicki is still in her 40s and single...
looking forward... no motorcycle leather clad owe i...
or pretend Zen buddhist either...
masculinity as... something eclectic...
those specimens of men that...
drag their offspring to football matches
and turn them into zealot supporters...
if i were bothered enough to be implored
to breed: i'd plough out a *******
Frankenstein: i already know i'm halfway...

what's that saying in casually dating when
you have multiple partners...
oh... right: it's...
es ist... kompliziert...
   i bicycle through central London
looking for two eye-sores... the tourists
are easy to spot... a pair of *** girls one flashing her
knickers while i pass...
the other taking a photography of an array of bricks...
but i'm also looking out for spotting thoese
gems those sugar-babies walking like
their usual selves... peacocking their sugar-daddy
assets...
married men with ****-**** on the side...
always in the centre of capital...
while also... on the side...
spotting... the very... past angry: melancholy women...
probably failed feminists...

well look at me: i stopped believing in love...
i started to be charged for intimacy...
at £2 per minute... at £120 per hour...
i dearly pretend to think that a session at
the barbers is "about the same" as...
a ******* from a nymphomaniac...

again: to reiterate english with German...
at the Ypres vicinity... the mass graves....

give me too much whiskey: i'll drink too much, whiskey
i'll blame my muse!
give me just enough: i'll go to bed early!

geben mich zu viel whisky: ich werden zu viel, whisky
ich werden tadel mein muse!
geben mich nur genug: ich werden zu gehen bett früh!

a newly arrived proverb from the Slavs:
if you come among the crows:
you better croak like them...

             wenn du kommen sie unter die krähen:
du beste krächzen wie (wei) sie (sei)...

yes... almost everyone is literate...
the priests and their monopoly of literacy have
disappeared..
but new monopolies have and new a literacy have
arrived...
come... sniff at me... if i ought to be a "beta"
sniffing glue off the heels of an alpha...
ich... bin... komplett!

         herr omega...          herr niemand-nix...
der letzte ratte...
                 pounding my heart to tease
a sponge...
   oh the air i breathe i will assure you...
my experience with prostitutes will never
be a Walt Whitman: ga-ga-gay...

'to a common *******' -
be composed - be at ease with me - i am walt whitman,
liberal and ***** as nature,
nor till the sun excludes you do i exclude you,
not till the waters refuse to glisten for you
and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse
to glisten and rustle for you...

well **** me... between listening to
KULT's - brooklyńska rada żydów...
and... john williams' - if i were a rich man?

i'd have a harem and a camel's weight worth
of hard-on pills...
while in my youth i'd... invest wisdom and humour
to see a boxing match between king Solomon
and Buddha!
oh these labyrinths of constraints of what someone
else has assured themselves with
"gravity"... just prior...

by the girth of the right of birth and all that's
required of me to come around by: merely timing...
perhaps it would have just been easier to
fudge-pack *** with all the custard lot of ****
to begin with...

Walt Whitman... that ****** on a string...
while here i am... chore bound to juice up...
one of those "fair maidens":
always those... insufferable holes in the ground...
these: the phallus is... obnoxious...
it rises into the air and stratifies shade...
the **** the floral bud...
the mantis... the black widow...
the venus fly-trap...
     no... all caressing creatures!
at least i can both ingest fine food with
my mouth... while also able to:
puke the lies people speak...
which mingle with already eaten food...

if solipsism is merely a concept...
then... what ever happened to that Greek
demigod deity?
Narcissism is a concept: there's also the demigod
deity... but... it seems like...
the old gods of the Greeks kept the existence
of this... prancing ******* rabbit-toothed pony
a ******* secret...
where are we now?
in a society of sociopaths and ghosts!

the advent of Solipssus...
              someone train some dragons or conjure
up some demons to get this
urban rent-boy off his ******* peddle-stool!
to hell with the wrath of Venus!
she has enough ****** on c.c.t.v. cameras making
enough "dough" for not loaf of bread as we speak!

i just... wanted to be assured...
the 'ebrew deity assured me...
                 look at the letters...
the sounds and forms that people are and become...
come much later... but not too late...
they'll still be your... contemporaries...
you'll see a shift...
H-H: rugby...
                     Y: the tongue of the serpent...
begins with W and begins with M...
W: cosine... M: sine...

                   i owe nothing to the Hebrews...
but truth be told... this **** show of scouting for ******
in the ruins of Dubai...
will bite back... i'll be dead then...
the current sparring contest between
the Ishraelis and the Iranians...
always favour the minority...
the ****'ites are... the minority...
    the Persians would never bow to some...
hot-rod & hearted bunch of camel jockeys
findning literacy... all of a sudden!
"all of a sudden"!

           came the great tide... alliances are being made...
the Israelis are already making bargains with
the Persians... once... this... Arabian... fairground
collapses... once the ethics of the western mind
impose... when slavery was abolished in 1833
"somewhere": in Arabia it was only until 1970...

Christianity emerged in year 0...
Islam in year 633... circa...
give 'em some time... too much sun: turban's being
fried at present from all that imported *****-work...
but... come circa 1412... paganism was still
defended in Europe by an alliance
of Polacks and Lithuanians versus
the Teutonic knights...
i guess because the crusade involving
Barbarossa failed... i hope... the great ginger
gherkin did manage to find his way to...
Yerusalem...

  just saying: hands in the air... jazz hands:
Pontius Pilate imposing!
give those h'Arabs some time...
they've been sitting on dinosaur juice all this time
it's not wonder they want to pay out
their... well-earned: investment in...
sand... camel jockey has to have his yacht pride...
his... miracle of Dubai... a city built on sand...
unlike the thick splodges of London clay...
i will die before any of this tumbleweed giggling
happens...
it will be revelled in like a crescendo like no
other...
when... those Syrians were not welcomed
by those Saudis...
because the Saudis would only accept...
in between: Romanian ******...

                  as they would still decapitate youths
for staging minor protests...
the Slavs didn't welcome what the western Lands
seemed to be missing...
i guess: inbreeding paramount?
not... those... ****-less ***-starved youths
as if it wasn't a polygamous cult of bypassing
shared ambitions of...
a plumber hooked up with a hairdresser...
and they had an irish catholic lot of children
together, while the state allowed some aid?

no?
      well... i am a glistening slab of marble
lodged in a ray of moonlight with a smile...
all is not my plan: but the harvest of what's to be
allowed to be... made: demised.
Katinka Nov 2020
Das kleine Kind so heiter
Spielt verträumt immer weiter
Brummend kommt die Walze angefahrn
Und dreht die Runden vor dem Kran
Und so macht sich auch der Letzte den Reim:
Kranplätze müssen verdichtet sein!
#Kranplätze müssen verdichtet sein!
Mateuš Conrad May 2022
sitting through a lightning storm:
i "think" i blinked twice...
come lightning: come thunder...
the deities' empty stomachs:
hungry for a sacrifice... something
requires to be eaten...

Slayer's i want to be your god...

i do... feel like a demigod...
not even *** matches up to the sensation
of chilling out during a lightning-thunder
storm...

i don't even need drugs: just delusions...
but by now: perhaps these are not delusions...
just imaginary drugs...
false beliefs? isn't that what Plato
asked Hercules of?

that conversation must have taken place:
somewhere between Mars and Jupiter...

Jeffrey Dahmer met his caricature:
i.e. Napoleon Dynamite...
and tried to laugh: but was met with
impotence of the mantis / oyster cult
of the ******...

i'll admit it though... curious... eerie looking...
bewildered... women:
oh... i didn't see you in the club...
because i was taking my Maine **** ginger
prize to the vet...
all the other cats arrived in cages...
mine? dearest Quarus...
on my lap...

    exasperating himself with heavy breathing...
do cats even have the capacity of dogs
to sweat by drooling?!
apparently they have...
if you over-excite them with:
undiscovered geography...

so i was sitting there... in the waiting room:
shh shh... hush hush darling...
curb our excitement...
like a Don Corleone...
best movie ever... star wars...
lord of the rings can hide in the shades
of the doppelgangers...
eh... mmm... just the hand movement:
the laconic: whatever...

so there he is... sitting in my lap...
hush hush... shh shh... stroking his forehead...
his nose...
under-stroking his... "chin"?!
and he's sitting pretty...
at only 8.4kg... he's still the biggest cat
in the practice...
aw... what a pretty tiger...
great! so now i have a ***** in my hands
and he's getting more attention than i will
ever get... great!

too bad he didn't freak out and didn't
start scratching the women...
either side of me...
   one with a poodle on a leash...
another with a timid rabbit...

personally? i rather take that poodle for a walk...
and feed that rabbit raw carrots and cabbage...
but there i am...
sitting pretty... my cat's not in a cage:
it could pounce any time soon...
i'm
   Don Corleone...
     i'm Azog the white orc with his
pet: that warg matriarch...
hey... i live in "fantasy" land... i stopped watching
television...
who else owned cats?!
Dr. No?             Dr. Evil?
      
i am: but then i correct myself:
there's no "i think" materialisation to counter-contend
my insinuations...
ergo? i am a multitude of "delusions"...
i also "think" that by simply "existing"
is a delusion...
it must be: it would be more authentic if i had
a repeated dream...
if my dreams were heavily: prone
to visual fabrications...

            i don't think i'd even bother to make myself:
question...
but since all my dreams i see in black:
perhaps the chance audio:
    i step back and "think":
   not all is right...
                        
  from the greatest horrors of the 20th century:
came... the greatest... creative: trailblazers...
but now?
    that's why the 20th century is so, unique!
what's that spider-man quote?
with great power... comes great responsibilities...
no horror: no imagination...
hello: Damoscl sword... just... dangling...

i'm a mediocre whoever in a time: whatever...
i "think" i'm special only because...
i live in very... mediocre times...
i know it's a delusion...
  but it's not a false belief...
            i still do belong to the 20th century...
i find myself at an age that allows me to be:
rather than become:
un-relatable to the youth...
  the world has moved on...
           everything moves on... yet returns
come noon or midnight... whatever...

i see it as the exceptional counter of art:
without exceptional suffering there will never be
an exceptional creativity...
unless i'm running solo...
     and i'm the only exhibit of creativity
and there: truly is... genuine suffering in this
world: without all the worldly constraints
akin to tapeworms...and earthquakes...

and the limitless music of...
the sound of men's necks breaking at the noose
from hanging themselves...

müdeseelen hören es erste!
tired-souls hear it first...

           und was reihe von auswahl!
and what an array of choice!

               me and my German fetish...
please! dearest god or stone:
array me with... a: dreamless night!            

gott oder stein!
     gott oder berg!
    stein an stein an stein an stein...
ich fast vergessen die meere!

                                versöhnlichsprache:
the English have nothing to do with it...
i just want to distance myself from the Russians...
because? they're being *******...

der erste... das letzte:
   der durst!
             und hunger!
das pinke: aber nicht flamingo!
    kapieren?!
                 kapieren?! n'ah: nicht kapieren!
"kapieren" ist: tod erste:
erste / durst / erste / durst...
              teuflischluftspiegelungen
von verloren liebe;

  for once: i will not translate!
                                      aus! *****! end!
das ist es!                                das ende!
Marie Nov 2020
Hinter dem dunklen Augenvorhang *******alles ausgeleuchtet.
Ein stilles Leben auf harten Platten,
systemverartigt vorbehandelt
blickt die Flaschenleere
auf längst verweste Fische in silbrigblassen Totenhemden,
die sich auf ihrer mondigen Pappbahre
in die Pinselhaare geschlichen haben,
bereit für die letzte Ölung

In diesen beschaulichen Bescheinlichkeiten,
vergisst selbst die Leinwand zu schreien und zu toben

nur die Farben wollen sich nicht unterordnen.
Blutleer haben sie die Witterung verloren,
krallen sich fest, am schlicht gewebtem Stoff,
in dieser nasenlosen Welt,
die den Geschmack der Leidenschaft nicht kennt,

bis der Augenvorhang sich hebt und die Extrem-i-täten-losigkeit
der Dunkelheit in die Arme fällt.

Was einst in folgsamen Rahmen dahinvegetierte
und kaum eine Pinselwimper zum Zucken brachte,
will nun den Rahmen sprengen.

Befreite Farben toben rauschhaft
aus leeren Flaschen, toten Heringen, fleischigen Schenkeln und stürmischen
Borsten,
konturlos,
nach Halt suchend,
finden keine Form,
verlieren die Bindung,
und landen jenseits der Umarmung
Von einem Maler der, nach der Wende, das Freisein lernen musste.
Seine Bilder inspirierten mich zu dieser Prosa.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2018
verbreitetvolk.....

      common folk...

pagans...

words heave no archeological
findings
to wake the hibernating grizz...

stadtsprechen ist nein
   verbreitetsprech...
waking father,
from the Hapsburg haven...
lost the labour loss...
   hier die femme,
letzte, die eine mann.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2021
nothing's going to happen tonight... i'm already thinking what i'm going to be eating for breakfast, how much time it's going to take me complete that NVQ English & Mathematics assessments, the first module... for that role as steward at venues... i'd love to rethink writing, this writing, as: something more than what tabloid newspapers & magazines employ people for... no matter... i don't think i have the stomach to even begin to care what people want to digest... let the people be people: it becomes much easier thus, to become yourself... wholly... but i won't be up to much tonight... why, just because, see below:

there's not much to write about this night...
absolutely nothing:
i'm only scribbling because:
it would be a complete waste: to simply,
to merely drink...
i can't just drink, just: drink...
   waste of a good bourbon if i'm not bleeding
any ink...
the highlight? one of my maine *****
decided to investigate the windowsill
i was perching on... with one foot folded
sitting on it...
so he jumped onto the windowsill
and started toying with: truth or dare with
his reflection... i took a few photographs...
because, as someone once said:
spending time around cats is never
a wasted moment...
it possibly can't be...
       freedom from the leash... from taking
the animal for a walk...
but beside this zenith: of a cat peering into
glass: when glass becomes a mirror in
the night, source of light on the inside...
complete darkness outside...
hell... he managed to sit so excited that
i stood up & took a picture of myself with him...
i stroke my beard...
i scratch my head... if there was a glass
of milk available: i'd probably drink it...
i stroke my beard:
god, i miss fidgeting with my chin
& jaw-line...
        i sometimes wish i was 18 again
and had my long hair done-up into
a French braid...
then i wish i wasn't...
   i like being this indecisive...
        stretched over time... yet composed
to a little bit of space...
- such unspectacular writing...
anyone could do it with enough
focus for keeping up with the rigours
of grammar & spelling...
yet for me... merely an interlude...
winter has come and cycling has become
a chore... extra clothing... gloves...
when speeding even if the recorded
temp. is only hovering above one degrees Celsius...
the felt temp. when riding a bicycle:
with the wind "impediment" drops to below 0...
but winter comforts my thought(s)...
the almost eternal night sooths...
all colours on the ground: dimmed...
everything is more: sketched...
rather than painted...
        i always adored winter...
all that's missing is the snow...
why will the snow never come?
warum werden der schnee, nie kommen?
will the snow never come? why?
come night... when: as it falls...
pirouettes of ghostly ballerinas...
that's how i remember it...
standing in the middle of a graveyard
at night... looking up...
as the flakes fell on my face...
i have never... experienced a tender kiss...
not by a mother, not by a girlfriend...

ich vermissen... dies, nur freude:
komme(n) die lange nacht...

    schneeflocke... schneeflocke...
   kuss mich, nur eine: letzte zeit.
Jonas 2d
Du lachst
Die Erde brennt
Quatsch tut sie gar nicht!
Das ist eine Verschwörung der Milchbauerverbände
Check deine Fakten!
"Ich höhr prinzipiell jedem zu"
Demokratisch gewählt heißt legitimiert
Kann gar nicht falsch sein
Geh mal weg mit 1933, oder doch 1984?

Du lachst
Die Wälder rauchen, husten nur noch
Alle Spezies sind tot bis auf zwei
Gut
Passt so auch besser in ein Kinderbuch
Nicht zu viel Diversity
Das sexualisiert unsere Kinder

Du machst
Nichts mehr
Was willst du schon tun kleiner Mann?
Molotovs bauen lernen?
xD
Schade um den Alkohol
Mach dir lieber noch ein Bier auf

Kann man nichts machen
Ist eh zu heiß draußen um sich aufzuraffen
Noch ein wenig Geschichten erzählen, gemeinsam
Von jetzt ist die Zeit und es ist noch nicht zu spät
Jeder Zyniker weiß längst
Aufwärts geht's nur im Telefon
Weißer Screen im schwarzen Raum
Was sind schon verschenkte Stunden in einer kaputten Welt?

Du weinst
Nicht mehr
Schon lange nicht mehr
Wann war das letzte Mal?
Der Blick ins Leere, endlich taub
und nichts tut mehr weh

Nehmt mir alles was ich habe
Noch mehr Müll für mein Gehirn bitte
Im unter 10 Sekunden Format
Und zu Letzt geht die Hoffnung
Ertrinken im Mittelmeer

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