Translated by Diana Lewis Burgin
Liebster, Dich wundert die Rede?
Alle Schiedenden reden wir
Trunkene und nehmen gerne sich
festlich…
– Holderlin
Dedication
I shrug – and mountains fall,
And my soul – mounts.
Let me of mourning sing:
Of my mountain sing!
Never can I stop up
The unfilled black gap.
Let me of mourning sing
On the mountain’s top.
1.
That mountain mimed a recruit’s
Chest, knocked in by a shell.
That mountain desired lips
Virginal, a marriage ritual
Did that mountain demand.
– In the inner ear an ocean rumbled
Like a burst of sudden hurrahs!!
That mountain pursued and grumbled.
That mountain was a thunder-blast!
Silly having Titans as playmates.
Do you recall that mountain’s last
Cottage – where the suburb terminates?
That mountain was – worlds!
For one, God charges dearly!
Mountain my mourning unfurled.
That mountain rose over the city.
2.
Not Parnassus, not Sinai –
Simply a bare, barracks-like
Hill. ‘Form up! Fire!’
What’s the reason, then, in my eyes
(It being October, not May)
That mountain was – paradise?
3.
Like paradise proffered on someone’s
Palm – don’t touch if it burns!
Mountain kept throwing herself under-
Foot, using her rutted steep turns.
As if seizing a Titan with conifer
And shrubbery paws,
Mountain kept grabbing my skirts,
Commanding me: ‘Stop!’
Oh, it was far from an A-B-C
Paradise – that draft of drafts!
Mountain kept throwing us backward,
And summoning: ‘Lie flat!’
Struck dumb by the energy,
– What? It is still unclear! –
Mountain, procuress of sanctity,
Would indicate: ‘Here…’
4.
Persephone’s pomegranate seed!
How to forget you in winters’ rime?
I recall lips, a double-edged seashell
Opening itself to mine.
Persephone, by a seed brought under!
Persisting crimson of lips,
And your eyelashes – like jagged notches,
And a star’s golden tips…
5.
Passion is not deceit, and not fantasy,
And no lie, – but it is brief!
Oh, if only we’d been in reality
Love’s mediocrities!
Oh, if only it were plain and sensible:
Just – a hill, just – a mound…
(Mountains, they say, are measurable
In height by their pull to the ground.)
In clumps of dun-colored heather,
Amid destitute islands of spruce…
(Ecstasy’s peak – tops the level
Of life.)
“Take me! I’m yours…”
But the family’s tender kindnesses,
But the twitter of fledglings – alas!
All because in this world we were highnesses –
Love’s sky-dwelling class!
6.
Mountain mourned (and mountains mourn with
Mocking mud at moments of moving-on),
Mountain mourned for the dove-like
Tenderness of our murky morns.
Mountain mourned for our friendship:
Lips’ kinship-bond most steadfast.
Mountain mentioned that according
To one’s tears shall things come to pass.
Also, mountain mentioned that – life’s a
Mall, a lifelong shopping for hearts!
Also, mountain mourned: “If only
He’d let Hagar and the babe depart!”
Also, she mentioned that this is a demon
At play, that the game’s a dud.
Mountain mouthed on, we were muted,
Leaving mountain to judge.
7.
Mountain mourned, what’s now blood and heat
Shall be – merely misery.
Mountain mentioned she would not release
Us, or with another let you be.
Mountain mourned, what’s now the world and Rome
Shall be – merely smoke.
Mountain mentioned we were to be with
Other people (I don’t envy those folks!)
Mountain mourned the awful burden
Of a vow it’s too late to vow.
Mountain mentioned, duty and passion –
That Gordian Knot's ancient now.
Mountain mourned our mourning –
Tomorrow! Not now! When above brows
There’s no longer memento, just mori!
Tomorrow when we’ll understand.
A sound…as if somebody’s simply –
Well…mewling nearby?
Mountain mourned that singly, we
Must descend through the mire –
Into life, which, as we all know, is a:
Mob – barracks – bazaar.
She mentioned as well that all mountain
Poems are written like that.
8.
That mountain was like the hump
Of Atlas, a Titan griping.
The city will be proud of that
Mountain, where from morn to night we
Staked our lives – as on a card!
Passionate, in not being we’re obstinate.
On a par with a bear’s snarl
And the twelve apostles –
Honor my gloomy grotto.
(Grotto was I – and waves cavorted!)
Do you recall the final move
In the game – where the suburb aborted?
That mountain was – worlds!
Gods revenge their likenesses!
Mountain my mourning unfurled.
That mountain’s on me – like a monument.
9.
Years pass by, that mountain’s monument
Is removed, by a slab replaced.
Cottages shall our mountain ornament,
She’ll be hemmed in by palisades.
They say, in places like these outskirts
Air is purer and life’s a breeze.
And she’ll be carved into lot strips,
With cross-pieces she will be creased.
They will straighten out my mountain passes,
Turn my gorges upside down!
For there has to be – at least somebody
Home in happiness, a whole happy town!
Happiness – in the house! Love without fantasies!
With nothing adventuresome!
Be a real woman – and endure it!
(There used to be, when he’d come,
Happiness – in the house!) Love unembellished
Either by parting, or a knife.
On the ruins of our happiness a
Town will rise – of husbands and wives.
And in that blessed airiness
– While you still can, sin! –
There’ll be shopkeepers on holiday
Raking the profits in,
Making plans for floors and corridors –
So that every thread winds home to rest!
For there must be – at least someone who
Needs a roof with a stork’s nest.
10.
But under the weight of those foundations
Mountain will not forget – the mime.
There are dissolute folk, not forgetful ones:
Mountain has mountains of time!
From the all-persistent crevasses
Too late will cottagers grasp:
No hillside this, abloom in families –
It’s a crater about to crack!
With vineyards Vesuvius
Can’t be chained! A giant with flax
Can’t be bound! The sanity dubious
Of lips is enough to tax
Vineyards into a growl leonine,
Belching hate’s lava in tons.
May your daughters all be concubines,
And poets – your sons!
May your daughter give birth out of wedlock!
Your son, die for gypsy girls’ love!
May you not have a den of iniquity,
You oafs, built on my blood!
Firmer than any cornerstone,
Like a mortal’s death-bed vow:
‘May you not have your dollop of happiness,
Ants, on my mountain, now!’
Afterword
There are blanks in memory, cataracts
On eyes: the seven veils…
I don’t remember you – separately,
Instead of features – whiteness prevails.
Lacking marks. As if you’re all a
White blank. (A soul, all in sores,
All a sore.) Marking particulars
With chalk is – a tailor’s chore!
Sky’s vault is all of a piece constructed.
Is the ocean – a droplets’ conglobe?
Lacking marks. Truly – someone special –
Whole. Love’s a bond, not a probe.
Whether your hair’s chestnut or raven –
Let a neighbor say: he can gawk.
Can passion really in parts be riven?
Am I a doctor? Do I make clocks?
Like a circle, you’re whole, integrated.
A whole whirlwind, a stupor complete.
I don’t remember you separated
From love. Sign of equality.
(In the heaps of sleepy sheerings
– Waterfall, hillocks of foam –
Something new, strange to the hearing,
Rather than: I – the we of the throne…
But then, in our poor and tethered
Life – “life as it is in fact” –
I don’t see you together
With anyone else.
Memory’s pay-back.
Prague. Smikhov Hill, January 1924
