Monday, December 22, 2014

ELSE LASKER-SCHÜLER ~











The Evening Rests On My Brow




The evening rests on my brow.

Man, I still haven't heard you murmur

or heard your heart roar —

and yet is not your heart

Earth's deepest shell?

Listening for the ring of your joy.

I learned next to your fear and listened closely.

But your heart is dead and Earth forgotten.

Oh, how I imagined that tone —

the evening presses it coolly to my brow.






I Am Sad



Your kisses darken on my mouth —

you no longer love me.



But how you once came —

blue for paradise.



On your ecstatic fountain

my heart danced.



Now I must paint it,

like the ladies who redden

the withered rose of their loins.



Our half-closed eyes

are like dying heavens.



The moon grows ancient.

And the night no longer watches.



You barely remember me —

where then shall I take my heart?






Farewell



But you never came with the evening —

I sat in a cape of stars.



When I heard someone knocking,

it was my own heart.

 

Now it hangs on every door post,

even yours —



among ferns a burnt-out fire-rose

in garland brown.



For you I stained heaven blackberry

with my own heart's blood.



But you never came with the evening —

I stood in golden shoes.






Prayer



In every country I seek a city

with an angel standing at the gate.

I carry broken on my shoulder

his great heavy wing,

and in my forehead the seal of his star.



And endlessly I roam the night

bringing love to this world,  

that every heart may blossom blue.

All my wearying life I have watched,

darkly breathing, cloaked in God.



Oh God, pull your coat tighter!

I know I'm the lees in the goblet,

and when the last man pours out the world

You'll not let me slip through your might again —

a new globe of earth will encompass me.




_________________

E L S E    L A S K E R - S C H U L E R
translated from the German by Janine Canan



Star In My Forehead
Holy Cow! Press
2000

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lasker-schueler-else