M A R I E L U I S E K A S C H N I T Z
Hiroshima
The man who dropped death on Hiroshima
Has taken vows, rings the bells in the cloister.
The man who dropped death on Hiroshima
Jumped into a noose and hanged himself.
The man who dropped death on Hiroshima
Has gone insane, fights apparitions
Made out of dust that come for him,
Hundreds of thousands every night.
None of all this is true.
Just the other day I saw him
In his front yard in the suburbs.
The hedges were low and the rosebushes dainty.
It takes time to raise an oblivious forest
For someone to hide in. Plain to see
The new, naked house, the young wife
Beside him in her flowered dress
The little girl holding her hand
The boy who was sitting across his back
Cracking a whip over his head.
He himself was easy to recognize
On all fours on his lawn, his face
A grimace of laughter, because the photographer stood
Outside the hedge, the eye of the world.
By Writing
By writing I wanted
To save my soul.
I tried to make poems
It did not work.
I tried to tell stories
It did not work.
You cannot write
To save your soul.
Given up, it drifts and does the singing.
The White Ships
In our mathematical world
Who can still remember
Anything that decays
And anything that takes root?
White whitest white
Sooner or later we too
Will get our coats of oil-base paint
Then we'll stop getting older
We'll eat blancmange
The clocks will stay white
Except that the night
Drums up hordes of unknown stars.
My Ground
I have staked out my ground
With frozen fishes
My path to freedom
Is marked by rustling corn husks
I raise ice ferns
On my windowpane
I breathe a circular hole
For my visitors
They see my eyes
My lashes waving
In vain
Around midnight the slalom of ghosts
Sweeps through the corn.
_______________
MARIE LUISE KASCHNITZ
translated by Lisel Mueller
Princeton University Press 1980
