Poems Read online

  Chinese, Malayans are shouting,

  Laughing loudly and trading their knickknacks.

  Behind me, feverish nights, and days

  Of glowing life, that even now I carry

  Carefully as treasures in my deepest thoughts,

  As though I still wet my feet in the jungle stream.

  I know many countries and cities are still waiting,

  But never again will the night of the forests,

  The wild fermenting garden of the earliest world

  Lure me in, and horrify me with its magnificence.

  Here in this endless and gleaming wilderness

  I was removed farther than ever from the world of men—

  And I never saw so close and so clearly

  The image in the mirror of my own soul.

  Evil Time

  Now we are silent

  And sing no songs any more,

  Our pace grows heavy;

  This is the night, that was bound to come.

  Give me your hand,

  Perhaps we still have a long way to go.

  It’s snowing, it’s snowing.

  Winter is a hard thing in a strange country.

  Where is the time

  When a light, a hearth burned for us?

  Give me your hand!

  Perhaps we still have a long way to go.

  On a Journey

  (IN MEMORY OF KNULP)

  Don’t be downcast, soon the night will come,

  When we can see the cool moon laughing in secret

  Over the faint countryside,

  And we rest, hand in hand.

  Don’t be downcast, the time will soon come

  When we can have rest. Our small crosses will stand

  On the bright edge of the road together,

  And rain fall, and snow fall,

  And the winds come and go.

  Night

  I like the dark night well enough;

  But sometimes, when it turns bleak

  And peaked, as my suffering laughs at me,

  Its dreadful kingdom horrifies me,

  And I wish to God I could take one look at the sunlight

  And the blue of heaven brought back to light by its clouds,

  And I want to lie down warm in the wide spaces of the day.

  Then I can dream of the night.

  Destiny

  In our fury and muddle

  We act like children, cut off,

  Fled from ourselves,

  Bound by silly shame.

  The years clump past

  In their agony, waiting.

  Not a single path leads back

  To the garden of our youth.

  Ode to Hölderlin

  Friend of my young manhood, on many an evening

  I return gratefully to you, when in the elder bushes

  Of the garden fallen asleep

  Only the rustling fountains still make a sound.

  Nobody knows you, my friend; this new age has driven

  Far away from the silent magic of Greece.

  Without prayer, and cheated out of gods,

  People stroll reasonably in the dust.

  But to the secret gathering who sink in their inner lives,

  Whose souls God has stricken with longing,

  The heavenly strings of your songs

  Are ringing, even today.

  We turn passionately, exhausted by day,

  To the ambrosia, the night of your music,

  Whose fanning wing casts us into

  A shadow of golden dream.

  Yes, and luminously, when your song delights us,

  Sorrowfully burning for the blessed land of the past,

  For the temples of the Greeks,

  Our homesickness lasts forever.

  Childhood

  My farthest valley, you are

  Bewitched and vanished.

  Many times, in my grief and agony,

  You have beckoned upward to me from your country of shadows

  And opened your legendary eyes

  Till I, lost in a quick illusion,

  Lost myself back to you wholly.

  O dark gate,

  O dark hour of death,

  Come forth,

  So I can recover from this life’s emptiness

  And go home to my own dreams.

  Lying in Grass

  Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,

  And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,

  The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees’ song,

  Is this everything only a god’s

  Groaning dream,

  The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?

  The distant line of the mountain,

  That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,

  Is this too only a convulsion,

  Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,

  Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,

  Never resting, never a blessed movement?

  No! Leave me alone, you impure dream

  Of the world in suffering!

  The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,

  The bird’s cry cradles you,

  A breath of wind cools my forehead

  With consolation.

  Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!

  Let it all be pain,

  Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched—

  But not this one sweet hour in the summer,

  And not the fragrance of the red clover,

  And not the deep tender pleasure

  In my soul.

  How Heavy the Days …

  How heavy the days are.

  There’s not a fire that can warm me,

  Not a sun to laugh with me,

  Everything bare,

  Everything cold and merciless.

  And even the beloved, clear

  Stars look desolately down,

  Since I learned in my heart that

  Love can die.

  In a Collection of Egyptian Sculptures

  Out of jeweled eyes

  Silent and eternal, you gaze away

  Over us late brothers.

  Neither love nor longing appears to be known among

  Your smooth gleaming procession.

  Once, inconceivable, you walked, majestic

  Brothers and sisters of constellations,

  Among the temples.

  Even today, holiness like the distant fragrance of gods

  Drifts round your brows,

  Dignity round your knees:

  Your beauty breathes calmly,

  Your home is eternity.

  But we, your younger brothers,

  Stagger godless through a confusing life,

  Our trembling souls stand eagerly, opened

  To all the sufferings of passion,

  To every burning desire.

  Our goal is death,

  Our belief a belief in what perishes,

  No great distance of time defies

  Our fleeting faces.

  Nevertheless, we also

  Bear, burned into our very souls,

  The sign of a secret affinity to the spirit,

  We have a foreboding of gods, a feeling for you,

  Images of the silent past,

  A fearless love. Look:

  We hate nothing that exists, not even death,

  Suffering and dying

  Does not horrify our souls,

  As long as we learn more deeply to love.

  Our heart is the bird’s heart,

  And it belongs to the sea and the forest, and we name

  Slaves and wretches our brothers,

  We still name with loving names both animal and stone.

  So also the images

  Of our perishing lives will not survive us

  In hard stone:

  They will vanish smiling,

  And in the flickering dust of sunlight


  Every hour to new joys and unhappiness,

  Impatient, eternal, they will rise.

  Without You

  My pillow gazes upon me at night

  Empty as a gravestone;

  I never thought it would be so bitter

  To be alone,

  Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

  I lie alone in a silent house,

  The hanging lamp darkened,

  And gently stretch out my hands

  To gather in yours,

  And softly press my warm mouth

  Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak—

  Then suddenly I’m awake

  And all around me the cold night grows still.

  The star in the window shines clearly—

  Where is your blond hair,

  Where your sweet mouth?

  Now I drink pain in every delight

  And poison in every wine;

  I never knew it would be so bitter

  To be alone,

  Alone, without you.

  The First Flowers

  Beside the brook

  Toward the willows,

  During these days

  So many yellow flowers have opened

  Their eyes into gold.

  I have long since lost my innocence, yet a memory

  Touches my depth, the golden hours of morning, and gazes

  Brilliantly upon me out of the eyes of flowers.

  I was going to pick flowers;

  Now I leave them all standing

  And walk home, an old man.

  Spring Day

  Wind in bushes and bird piping

  And high in the highest fresh blue

  A haughty cloud ship, becalmed …

  I dream of a blond woman,

  I dream of my youth,

  The high heaven blue and outspread

  Is the cradle of my longing

  Where I choose to lie calm

  And blessedly warm

  With the soft humming,

  Just like a child held

  On his mother’s arm.

  Holiday Music in the Evening

  Allegro

  The cloudbank breaks up; down from the luminous heaven

  Giddy light fumbles across the bedazzled valleys.

  Blown by the storm of south wind

  I flutter along, unwearied,

  Through an overcast life.

  Oh, if only for a moment

  Between me and the light that lasts forever

  A storm would be kind enough to shatter the fog.

  Strange country surrounds me,

  Overwhelming breakers drive me, torn loose

  Far away, from my home to this place.

  South wind, hunt down the clouds,

  Tear the veil away,

  So light can fall on me among the confusing paths.

  Andante

  Again, every time, comforting

  And, every time, new in the gleam of endless creation,

  The world laughs in my eyes,

  Comes alive and stirs into a thousand breathing forms,

  Butterflies tumble in the wind streaming with sunlight,

  Swallows sail into the blessing, the blue light,

  Sea waves stream on the beach rocks.

  Again, every time, star and tree,

  Cloud and bird, my close kindred;

  The stone greets me as brother,

  The unending sea calls me, friendly.

  My road, that I do not understand, leads me

  Toward a blue, lost distance,

  Nowhere a meaning, nowhere a definite goal—

  Nevertheless, every forest brook speaks to me,

  And every humming fly, of a deep law,

  A right way that is holy,

  Whose firmament spreads out above me also,

  Whose secret tones,

  As in the pace of the stars,

  Beat time in my heart as well.

  Adagio

  A dream gives what the day wore out;

  At night, when the conscious will surrenders,

  Some powers, set free, reach upward,

  Sensing something godly, and following.

  The woods rustle, and the stream, and through the night-blue sky

  Of the quick soul, the summer lightning blows.

  The world and my self, everything

  Within and without me, grows into one.

  Clouds drift through my heart,

  Woods dream my dream,

  House and pear tree tell me

  The forgotten story of common childhood.

  Streams resound and gorges cast shadows in me,

  The moon, and the faint star, my close friends.

  But the mild night,

  That bows with its gentle clouds above me,

  Has my mother’s face,

  Kisses me, smiling, with inexhaustible love,

  Shakes her head dreamily

  As she used to do, and her hair

  Waves through the world, and within it

  The thousand stars, shuddering, turn pale.

  Thinking of a Friend at Night

  (SEPTEMBER 1914)

  In this evil year, autumn comes early …

  I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,

  The wind on my hat … And you? And you, my friend?

  You are standing—maybe—and seeing the sickle moon

  Move in a small arc over the forests

  And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.

  You are lying—maybe—in a straw field and sleeping

  And dew falls cold on your forehead and battle jacket.

  It’s possible tonight you’re on horseback,

  The farthest outpost, peering along, with a gun in your fist,

  Smiling, whispering, to your exhausted horse.

  Maybe—I keep imagining—you are spending the night

  As a guest in a strange castle with a park

  And writing a letter by candlelight, and tapping

  On the piano keys by the window,

  Groping for a sound …

  —And maybe

  You are already silent, already dead, and the day

  Will shine no longer into your beloved

  Serious eyes, and your beloved brown hand hangs wilted,

  And your white forehead split open—— Oh, if only,

  If only, just once, that last day, I had shown you, told you

  Something of my love, that was too timid to speak!

  But you know me, you know … and, smiling, you nod

  Tonight in front of your strange castle,

  And you nod to your horse in the drenched forest,

  And you nod in your sleep to your harsh clutter of straw,

  And think about me, and smile.

  And maybe,

  Maybe some day you will come back from the war,

  And take a walk with me some evening,

  And somebody will talk about Longwy, Lüttich, Dammerkirch,

  And smile gravely, and everything will be as before,

  And no one will speak a word of his worry,

  Of his worry and tenderness by night in the field,

  Of his love. And with a single joke

  You will frighten away the worry, the war, the uneasy nights,

  The summer lightning of shy human friendship,

  Into the cool past that will never come back.

  Autumn Day

  (NOVEMBER 1914)

  For moments at a time, the distance is silent,

  And all the mountains grow light

  Blue overhead, and glow in the moist

  November air like young white ornaments.

  The hilltops stand bare

  As so often, joyfully, I’ve seen them

  In a better time

  With fresh snow fallen beneath them.

  Not a person around me, the flocks are in the valley,

  Abandoned meadows lie still in their winter nakedness.


  In a cool resting place, I measure the distance

  With a peaceful gaze, and I see the blue of the evening,

  And sense the first star behind the ridge,

  And, breathing in, I sense the approaching

  Frost and dew. Then, with my evening shiver,

  Memory comes back to me

  And fury and suffering and deep lamentation—

  So much for my joy in wandering.

  And again my thoughts stand up

  Trembling over the distant struggle,

  Inhale gangrene, inhale the reek of the battle,

  Tremble with thousands of the wounded, the dying, the sick,

  And search, with blundering feelings,

  For beloved brothers in the blasting and tearing of the battle,

  And cling like children to the hands of their good mother

  Grateful and full of anguish for my fatherland.

  To Children

  (AT THE END OF 1914)

  You know nothing of time,

  You know only that, somewhere in the distance,

  A war is being fought,

  You whittle your wood into sword and shield and spear

  And play your game blissfully in the garden,

  Set up tents,

  Carry white bandages marked with the red cross.

  And if my wish for you has any power,

  So war will remain

  For you, always, only a dim legend,

  So you will never stand in the field

  And never die

  And never rush out of a house crumbling in fire.

  Nevertheless, you will be soldiers one day

  And one day you will know

  That the sweet breath of this life,

  The precious possession of the heartbeat,

  Is only a loan, and that whatever was lost

  In the past, and the heir you long for,

  And the farthest future,

  Rolls through your blood,

  And that for every hair on your head

  Somebody endured one struggle, one pain, one death.

  And you shall know that whatever is noble

  In your soul is always a warrior,

  Even though he bears no weapons,

  That every day a struggle and a destiny is waiting.

  Do not forget this I

  Think of the blood, the shambles, the ruin

  On which your own future reposes,

  And how, even more, upon death and sacrifice is builded

  The tiniest happiness.

  Then your life will flame out more