In Your Eyes
In your eyes, Europe, we are history's reservation
with our dated ideals
with our dusted-off treasure box
with the songs we sing
We give up our best
for the dragon of force and violence to devour
The young boys the beautiful girls
the best minds the most auspicious talents
the tribute of flowers crosses words
We the reckless heirs of earnestness
the unordained heralds of hope
inheritors of a native rhetoric
which fits us like a glove
even though yesterday
it still seemed rather tight
But Of Course
But of course you too would make a good martyr
with that poor health of yours with your shortness of breath
with your fussy habits
and your liking for a hot bath every day
But of course No one said anywhere
that you'll always keep on walking deep in thought
with that gentle smile of yours
that one day they won't throw your books about
that blood won't trickle from your beaten face
Above Us
Boys kicking a ball on a vast square beneath an obelisk
and the apocalyptic sky at sunset to the rear
Why the sudden menace in this view
as if someone wished to turn it all to red dust
The sun already knows And the sky knows it too
And the water in the river knows
Music bursts from the loudspeakers like wild laughter
Only a star high above us
stands lost in thought with a finger to its lips
What Can They
What can the interrogator and the interrogated tell each other?
What is the common language they could speak?
That language is mountains away and there is no fool
who would set out to look for it
The knife enters the animal's flesh without consent or prior inquiries
the apple won't strike up a chat with the rifle bullet cast off in the grass
the liar's tongue turns round like a rotten mill wheel
and the water won't sing in chorus with its creak
Longing for freedom is like a lark flying straight up
toward the face of God and the sun
with unshakable faith that the face will finally be seen
The little lark flies faster than the stone thrown by a foolish bully
Oh the dialogue of the shoe and the crushed weed
the dialogue of the pale warden and the young face paler still
the dialogue of force and martyrdom
cruelty and pain
the martyr and the torturer
before it's cut short
by whom by what when
Toward the End
Toward the end you don't really care if you're still yourself
everything that has lived in you has the right to exist
you speak with others' voices
you dream other people's dreams
they can feed you with porridge or tears
no one owes you anything anymore
and you've earned a little of it all
your sins are countless and your love for life spills over
you're a man of the world
but your curiosity isn't yet gone
you take in the twilight on the river till it hurts
you take in the gray engraving of the city in the rain
and the suddenly uncovered sky
cherished by a wreath of clouds
you've never felt such comfort
even though you've never gotten anything said to the end
and all the things you've done are far from perfect
the only art you're learning
is the art of saying good-bye
yet why are you supposed to leave without regret
regret is the only form of payment for what you have received
Before Dawn
Who do they work so hard for
what do they call to so stubbornly
repeating the same tune time and again
the same humble motif
sung with royal verve
What in this asphalt suburb
could give them such joy
such ecstasy of prayer while it's still dark
with not a single bright streak in the sky
to announce the dawn's arrival
Ah they know that somewhere far away
but not so far away
that they can't feel it
there are spreading elms
and a grove of airy green full of motion
and brotherly twitters
they know there are gardens standing on tiptoe
on the lookout for the spring's procession
They sense the hurried breath of lilacs
and, beneath the windows, the hyacinths' childish cries
O joyful, cooing birds
why did you wake me in the midst of hope
only to make me listen with despair
I don't know how to respond to your song
I can only strain my ears while I lie still in the dark
Who Says
While the innocents were being massacred who says
that flowers didn't bloom, that the air didn't breathe bewildering scents
that birds didn't rise to the heights of their most accomplished songs
that young lovers didn't twine in love's embraces
But would it have been fitting if a scribe of the time had shown this
and not the monstrous uproar on a street drenched with blood
the wild screams of mothers with infants torn from their arms
the scuffling, the senseless laughter of soldiers
aroused by the touch of women's bodies and young breasts warm with milk
Flaming torches tumbled down stone steps
there seemed no hope of rescue
and violent horror soon gave way to the still more awful
numbness of despair
At that moment covered by the southern night's light shadow
a bearded man leaning on a staff
and a girl with a child in her arms
were fleeing lands ruled by the cruel tyrant
carrying the world's hope to a safer place
beneath silent stars in which these events
had been recorded centuries ago
Your Nature
Your nature is evil Resign yourself to this
It calls through you with a voice that frightens you
With words you didn't think you had in you
It spurts from you differently than you expected
a boiling spring that smells of sulphur
from which green meadows of seeming grow faint
Hesitating over a Young Poet's Book
From the sequence "Americana"
The hotel maid will be surprised tomorrow morning
when she finds this book beside the bed
I think I'll leave it here
since my suitcase is already overflowing
Still I compare its weight once more
to the weight of the poems that it holds
His efforts after all are genuine
if in spite of this June heat
I did believe in the November sleet
that drove him to a bar after he had lost his girl
and I believed in that morning when it first dawned on him
how little his family home still meant
so he packed his bags and left forever
He took odd jobs
lived in a hurry woke up in the depths of despair
wishing he could fall asleep and never get up
and he clearly didn't steal these facts from any other life
or these poems from any other book
Doesn't that make his work worth keeping?
I've never been good at getting rid of things anyhow
Everything I come upon I carry in me
like a deposit left waiting by its tardy owner
Maybe they're right those people who shake off useless things so easily
and head straight for their chosen goal
They must find my wavering laughable
A Need
I believe in the sentence In the stop which seeks a form
as deft and modest as common speech
Everything within me longs for the moment when a shape
surmounts the shapelessness in which I dangle
and endure the quiet constant pain of indetermination
the dissolving thoughts and feelings
that create my rarefied space
This doesn't keep me from admiring the linden that stretches
branches wide across my window from hearing shrieks
of magpies both a nuisance and a blessing because they exist
it doesn't keep me from taking in the heat
of this dry and tragic summer
But a sentence a solid sentence
restores the earth beneath my feet
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh
The Ubiquity of Roses Wearied Me
A pack of poets mills about the garden
A heap of verses chiefly about roses
roses sapped by love and rapture
But just these two stay in my memory:
Rimbaud among the heliotropes
and Apollinaire amid the autumn crocuses
Nothing in Common
The light like a painting by Friedrich
but it's just a small suburban forest
bisected by a dirty stream that strains through fallen trees
Two thugs lead a girl wrapped in a shawl there
one might swear - with impious intentions
Some keen fear pricks my skin at the sight of this mangy humanity
some desperate protest
But it lasts just a split second
since the train now enters an expanse of gold-soaked fields
shocking us with light as if shaken from a nightmare
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
November
Motionless limbs of weeping willows by the water
just as the sunken branches were about to swim away
a flutist played, invisible
as there was no one on the bridge
Why return here after all these years
and how to endure this balanced beauty
this broadfaced sky that the noble dwellings
of he Saint-Louis hold on their shoulders
A ship chugs downriver with a quiet hum
an acrobat practices backflips on the embankment
the water's skin shivers at the touch of the sun
and a gentle breath of air escorts you
through a November trailed by leaves
Don't say what you left here
Don't say what you remember
thousands of hearts have drowned in this river
this fog of memories is enough for an entire continent
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
Relief Troops
"I am lonely, lonely! I am best alone!
- cries the poet William Carlos Williams dancing naked before
his mirror
I'm best alone! But upstairs on the home front
his wife the baby and the young nanny Kathleen are sleeping
ready to come running at his call
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
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