So I'm really self-conscious about my writing -- a terrible trait to possess for a would-be writer -- but I'm proud of this poem. I wrote it in German originally, which is why that's the first version I'm posting. Not to be a pretentious asshole, it's just that that's how it expressed itself to me when I wrote it. English translation below.
“Szene aus dem 21. Jahrhundert”
(Am Zeil)
Ein Schwarzer mit einem weißen Kreuz
»Das Ende kommt bald
Die Tage gehen schnell… schnell«
Sagt er niemandem.
Klingelnde Glocken
Ein Lichtspiel durch Regenschleier
Schwebend in leeren Gesichterwellen
Suchte ich ‘was vom Schönen
Ich kam mit Zigaretten zurück.
"Scene from the 21st century"
(On the Zeil)
A black man with a white cross
"The End comes soon
The days go quickly, so quickly..."
He says to no one.
Ringing bells
A play of light through a veil of rain
Empty waves of faces hovering...
I was looking for Beauty itself
I came home with cigarettes.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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Well done, Ben. I like it quite a lot. I can see why you'd be attached to the German; Heidegger does call it the language of poetry and philosopher (for him the same), after all.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it seems to invoke sentiments of isolation, not only the isolation of the prophet, but also of the spectator: the narrator who watches the "scene" play out, and the hovering faces; even the ringing of the bells is reduced to a visual fancy -- and, of course, the poem begins with two (non-)colors, black and white, which force the imagination to picture them, even as they are void of substance.
It really evokes Baudelaire for me. What do you think?
As for self-consciousness about writing, I can very much relate; that's why I haven't really posted anything, myself, although I probably should.
I.e.:
ReplyDeleteTo a Passer-By
The street about me roared with a deafening sound.
Tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief,
A woman passed, with a glittering hand
Raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;
Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's.
Tense as in a delirium, I drank
From her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate,
The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.
A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Will I see you no more before eternity?
Elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
For I know not where you fled, you know not where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!