by Tom Kuhn
Every day one of the friends went under
Soul by soul, the wind in their sails
They faded and floated down like fish but rendered
Pestilential the air, the beloved azure, over the canals.
The houses with their leprous brows spewed out
The starry nights which had seized their throats
Very suddenly over the beds in the casemates
The stars stood in person like the early firn, ice-white.
Let the grass too have meaning . . .
Let the grass too have meaning
O Lord when your wind blows
When the bells have rung for vespers
And the fields lie in repose.
When the birds among the branches
Have ceased their screaming, then
Suddenly sleep comes over
The loud man and the deaf man.
My neck in the grass, the blue grass
Feels how the warmth leaves
Your earth. And now the stars
Come home to me in droves.
Reason
It’s nearly evening and he has not come.
In this light would I even recognize him?
Soon, very soon, I’ll be an old woman
Unless of course I top myself before then.
No doubt I’m ugly but one thing I’ve understood:
Not for nothing are we flesh and blood.
Germany, you blonde pale land . . .
Germany, you blonde pale land
With your wild clouds and your gentle brow
What happened in your silent heavens?
Now you are the carrion pit of Europe.
Vultures over you!
Beasts tear your poor body to pieces
The dying defile you with their excrement
And their water
Wets your fields. Fields!
How gentle your rivers used to be
That now are poisoned by purple aniline.
With their teeth the children
Rip out the corn
In hunger
But the harvest drifts
Down the stinking waters.
Germany, you blonde pale
Never-never land. Full of
The blessed. Full of dead.
Never never again
Will your heart beat that has
Rotted, that you have sold
Pickled in Chile saltpetre
And got for it
Flags.
O carrion land, O pit of tribulations!
Shame throttles the memory
And in the young
Whom you have not corrupted
America awakes.
Our earth, undoing . . .
1
Our earth, undoing, rolls nonetheless onwards
The beast bewitched by the crimson sun!
And from Europe, the carrion crater, arises
Extends and increases in freedom a new generation.
2
Under the feverish red sunsets of downfall
Swarms of a new human being are heading our way
Over the globe they roll like a youthful singing
Over the black terra firma and the oily yellow sea.
3
He spits on the houses and rooftops with fever
The heavens suffice him, Orion, the Bear
On rotten wooden crates he would rather chase after
The sharks, the man-eaters, hungry for him though they are.
4
He is terrible in loving: she hated the weakling!
They wrap themselves up together, in skin
For the children he left her only his laughter
Which she sees in white teeth as the daylight comes in.
5
And now in a woman who once in the darkness—
And he was young—had bitten the skin off his throat
He knew himself and it smote his conscience
And out of the twilight his mother and father approached.
6
Mother and father were white-toothed creatures.
As never his tables, he knew them well.
With their cries in his throat, all four sets of claws
A nose for the wind and their enemy’s smell
7
From that day forth he is cast from the cities
In flight, distraught, towards what he might seize . . .
Oh from now on he sees his own hunting for quiet
In the chase of the pallors and reds of the skies.
8
And suns rise each time he raises his eyelids
And for him, for him, the sunsets are red!
Trees as youthful as he is deject him
And falling he sees: there are new lands ahead!
9
His soul is shy and the heavens turn paler
Whenever he must think with his brain not his knees
He weighs every word like a murky water
Is it shallow and warm enough for his needs?
10
And he still has the bitter night in his joints
Fear of the light in the folds of his skin
Blindly at night he finds the black potions
Goes to sleep with the owl as the grey dawn comes in.
11
But already there’s laughter, oh a mocking laughter
In him the lascivious child-in-a-man
But still brazen his face, all you feel are the thousand
Breaths of the wind that in fear passes over and on.
The black woods go upwards . . .
1
The black woods go upwards
Into the evil naked stone
Up into the cold sky
Black woods have grown.
2
Destroyed by frost and the east wind
The woods scream in pain—
But we down here have heard
The words said in an undertone.
3
The streams that come from there
Are colder than any can bear
But we have lain in beds
Colder still, down here.
4
They say you see nothing but darkness
Up there: firs block the light:
But we down here have observed
The play of the world’s plight.
5
They say also: above the forests
Nothing comes below in the stone
But we are the ones to pass over
Into the stone, serene.
Again and again there were red evenings . . .
1
Again and again there were red evenings
The smell of asphalt and the smell of thyme
They lived always expecting He would kill them
But He was lax and that was not His game.
2
The heavens radiant like the enormous lies
Made fools of them. It held them up, all that.
He wished to know just how long they could bear it
But they were clueless and never thought of that.
3
And when they asked was it His wish that they
Renounce, then too He did not speak
And left them standing in a dark wood
Without a word and veiled Himself in smoke.
4
But they said yes into the uncertainty
Gave up and fell upon their knees. That way
Quite soon their bitternesses ceased to be
(And somewhat sooner so did they.)
They have gone by . . .
They have gone by. In the red of evening.
With large crosses. Many ran after them.
I was left alone. Later the night
The rising moon knew nothing more about it.
Later, the cool night with the green moon . . .
Left alone, I had not gone with them . . .
I was rather cold, later towards morning . . .
/> Earth pleased me, of course, but the torment in my throat . . .
By now they are a long way off, with their
Large crosses. Doubtless they walked through the night.
Nothing detained them. Now nobody who forgot to follow them
Could catch them up. It will be better now
Will it not?
When she was done for . . .
When she was done for we let her go down in the earth
And grow flowers. Butterflies flutter above and away . . .
She, so light, weighed scarcely at all on the earth
How much pain it took till she was as light as that!
The bull is strong . . .
The bull is strong. He does not see the heavens. He walks in the sun and flattens the grass.
Ha, let there be laughter
in Judah and the clapping of hands, for the bull is strong!
The bull is strong but the grass he flattens is stronger. It knows the heavens and lifts itself up again.
Ha, let there be laughter in Judah and the clapping of hands, for the grass is stronger!
One contemplating the clouds is like the stone that sits tight. But the stone does not have to move nor go to the watering place.
Ha, let there be laughter in Judah and the clapping of hands, for the stone does not have to move!
The stone does not have to move but a blind man does not see the clouds. Is it not lovely to have the mouth full?
Ha, let there be laughter in Judah and the clapping of hands, for you are not blind!
And the waters swell when the moon is full and they do not become more water. But the lion dies of hunger if he continues lying where he is.
They are strong who do what they have to do and stronger are they to whom it does not matter.
For the hail does not strike them and whosoever does strike them does not strike them dead.
Ha, oh indeed let there be laughter and clapping in Judah, laughter and the clapping of hands, for you are still able to laugh!
A curtain-lecture
Be nice to me for once, will you
And kinder to your poor lungs too.
And show some manners, be better-bred
Don’t read the newspaper in bed.
Don’t drag me down with you in the mire
And don’t drink schnapps in the rocking-chair
I lose out, you know full well, and when
Might you wash your feet again?
Another man would blush to use
“The words” and fish between his toes
And wipe himself off on the sheet
But you think all that’s quite all right.
Shaved like a pig again and stubble
Worse even than usual.
And do you have to smoke so many
Virginias when we’ve no money?
Your breath stinks of them—and one more
Thing I had to say: come here
Be nice to me now, don’t be mean
Push your tongue in under mine.
Memories
My mother used to say: the Lord loves the simple, child
And would forever lay the Bible on the table before me
I read and I read till my eyelids wouldn’t hold
Then next morning I was bright and breezy.
I always liked spending a long time in the toilet
And my mother was ashamed in company because of this
And often I heard from her mouth the dictum that
The drones will be eaten up by the bees.
I did not understand the deeper sense back then
And now my mother lies under the sod
I can still hear her speaking the text at my confirmation
It is a good thing that the heart be established . . .
I am beginning to speak about death . . .
1
I am beginning to speak about death
There are many misconceptions
But if we separate wishes from dread
We get a faint sense of what threatens
He gains the world who forgets that death
Is half a breath
2
For it’s not one breath and the other
Half coming after it
And not the enough but rather
The too little that makes us sweat
The deluded man is wise
Who thinks he’ll not want as he dies
3
Things are as they are and will be
Throat’s a throat and thumb is a thumb
But gasping your last, believe me
A whirlwind couldn’t help you, chum
Your throat’s half sawn through, you squeak
Your last bit of wind out the leak
4
The waxen sepulchre light
Stiff fingers on your sheet
Cold mourners who eat and eat
Don’t suppose you’ll be spared that sight
Standing round you there tearfully
Was Man, was your enemy
5
You’ll never feed on him again
Your teeth are as long as a rake’s
But this very night they will break
You’ll hunger from this night on
Interim reports to the mission stations
1
This depraved bare-knuckle orangutan family
That squats omnisciently on every shore nowadays
And infects the heavens
Thinks
It is the midpoint of the planet
And that something or other
Moves in orbit around it.
But they were scarcely noticed in the small space
Between one ice-age and the next
When they had dealings with orangutans
Ate carrion meat
Drank water that was impure
Kicked one another’s faces in and
Copulated before they went to sleep.
Only five
Between one ice-age and the next
Sat on their fat arses
Smoked from the mouth
And
Stuck together.
Karl Hollmann’s Song
Smoking the yellow tobacco
By the shoals, fine weather, there’s still
Air in my lungs, and tobacco
In the bag, and newspapers as well.
Till night then I think of Jack, oh
He was my friend and I’m here
Smoking yellow tobacco
And Jack was yellower.
His face in the lacquered wood:
I nearly legged it, you know!
And it did not a blind bit of good
Me slugging five schnapps in a row.
God in heaven, they gave him the last
Rites. Fat lot of use that’ll be
Against the worms. No he’ll bust
Like a rotten banana, softly.
But it’s all one in the end
Life is no fun and that’s that.
The world is a shithouse, my friend
Jack, you’re well out of it.
I’m not being superior
Nor saying I envy you
But what you can’t cure, endure!
Jack, you were the man of us two.
Empty as yesterday’s news
Kippered in holy smoke
You’ve paid the Devil his dues
But Jack, it’s the worms I can’t take.
Oh Jack, I’d like to be sure
Nothing hurts you anymore. Really?
All in all I’m happy here:
The flies still piss in my coffee.
Oh Jack, such a green sky today!
And the flies! Often quite a swarm.
Yes, the pond, Jack, the pond anyway
Meanwhile is often quite warm.
When it’s chillier off I’ll go
Home with some breath in hand. Still
Alive and a home to go to!
Four walls
and a roof as well.
Report on an unsuccessful expedition
After we had not flown over Mont Cenis
Sadness came over us and we
Begrudged ourselves food.
Since by now it was winter
We slept a good deal.
The question we were asked by the common people hereabouts
Whether we intended to remain among them
Caused us sorrow.
Only the noise of great storms over the mountain
Cheered us somewhat. Then we said:
It would have been impossible.
From the third month onwards we felt afraid
To step over the low threshold and
Over all the time of our defeat
Outside our door
The mountain was growing.
Thoughts before the photograph of Therese Meier
At home, on the flea-yellowish wallpaper, below
The much-by-moths-tormented lammergeier
Whether the last tenant forgot it or meant me to have it now
Hangs the portrait of the departed spinster Therese Meier.
True, it is only a photograph and a very faded one at that
And I don’t know is it really a good likeness or not