We present this work in honor of the poet’s 275th birthday.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German 1749 – 1832
Cover your sky, Zeus, With cloudiness, And try out your strength, Like a boy beheading thistles, On oaks and mountain tops; You must leave standing My earth And hut not built by you, And my hearth Whose glow you envy.
I know nothing poorer Under the sun than you, o gods! You sparely nurture Your majesty On sacrificial tribute And the breath of prayers, And would starve If children and beggars Were not hopeful fools.
When I was a child And had reached my wit’s end, I turned my lost eye To the sun, as if above it Were an ear to hear my lament, A heart like mine To take pity on me in my straights.
Who helped me Against the arrogant Titans? Who saved me from death, From slavery? Did you not attain it all yourself, Holy glowing heart, And young and innocent, betrayed, Radiated thanks for deliverance To the sleeper up above?
I honour you? For what? Have you ever soothed The pain of the burdened? Have you ever dried The tears of the frightened? Have not almighty time And eternal fate, My lords and yours, Forged me into manhood?
Did you imagine I would hate life, Flee into deserts Because not all My dreams blossomed Into fruition? Here I sit, make men In my image, A race that shall be like me, Suffer, weep, Take pleasure and enjoy, And ignore you, Like me.
We present this work in honor of the 325th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Friedrich von Canitz German 1654 – 1699
So the old year remains behind forever. As the sun’s course divides, so it cuts off the times! How old age drags us so quickly into the grave! That means poorly lived the few moments,
In which much annoyance mixed with bad luck And nothing but instability revealed itself! That probably means badly used when the walking stick Never gets out of our hands when we use cunning and snares
Stumbling in the night, where there is little light And light, which is not always safe to follow. For if the Most High does not want to show his own light,
That, when we lose our way, touches our minds and eyes, Is all light a light that leads to damnation. Oh, the time is too short! Oh, the journey is too difficult!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 300th birthday.
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock German 1724 – 1803
Ha! there comes he, with sweat, with blood of Romans, And with dust of the fight all stained! O, never Saw I Hermann so lovely! Never such fire in his eyes!
Come! I tremble for joy; hand me the Eagle, And the red, dripping sword! come, breathe, and rest thee; Rest thee here in my bosom; Rest from the terrible fight!
Rest thee, while from thy brow I wipe the big drops, And the blood from thy cheek! — that cheek, how glowing! Hermann! Hermann! Thusnelda Never so loved thee before!
No, not then when thou first, in old oak-shadows, With that manly brown arm didst wildly grasp me! Spell-bound I read in thy look That immortality, then,
Which thou now hast won. Tell to the forests, Great Augustus, with trembling, amidst his gods now, Drinks his nectar; for Hermann, Hermann immortal is found!
“Wherefore curl’st thou my hair? Lies not our father Cold and silent in death? O, had Augustus Only headed his army, — He should lie bloodier there!”
Let me lift up thy hair; ‘tis sinking, Hermann; Proudly thy locks should curl above the crown now! Sigmar is with the immortals! Follow, and mourn him no more!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
Elisabeth Langgässer German 1899 – 1950
Already now the white is spent of field chickweed, and the froth that shaped the violet larva tent decays around the silent moth. Dandelion snuffed its lamp, corydalis seeded there, nettle walked the hillside ramp, swallow flights trace the air: —Pale as on silk they write— laud the ideal and take flight! Suffer renewal and hurry from the mere semblance to sense. Fear not the busy worry of cricket rasp. I abide still over the grave of Osiris but you are already hence when with the swords of iris spring’s passing pierces your side. Ours the fragile silk weave of earthly span. Take your leave!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Liesel Mueller German 1924 – 2020
Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolves night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don’t know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and change our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
Heiner Müller German 1929 – 1995
Pushkin dying Of his duel wound Asked for a mirror And a bowl of millet porridge LIKE A MONKEY he said Spooning into the mirror As far as we know we will Not see each other again We do not need To fool ourselves any more Probably Nothing new will happen but there will be Probably Nothing Whatever that may be Even the leap into the mirror would not bring Us closer to each other Glass clinks The way women scream
After the ashes of the fatherland and the fallen heights of relatives, that the Thuringian land bore from the hostile sword, if I spoke of wars of wars lived through in unfortunate strife, to what tears should I, a captured woman, be drawn first? What remains for me to weep? This people pressed by death or the sweet race family ruined by various vicissitudes? For the father falling first, the uncle following him each relative fixed a sad wound in me. A last brother remained, but by execrable fate the sand pressed me equally to his tomb. With all those extinct (alas the rough guts of the one grieving!) you who were the one left, Hamalafred, you lie dead. Do I Radegund seek such after long times? that your page brought this to speak to the sad one? I waited so long for such a gift from my loving one and you send me this act of your military service? You direct these silken sheepskins to me now to my thought so that, while I draw threads, I the sister have communication with love? Did your care thus counsel powerful grief? Did the first and last messenger give this? Did we rush elsewhere with ample tears in our desires? It was not for the one desiring to be given bitter sweets. I am twisted by solicitous sense, anxious in my bosom: is such fever of the spirit healed by these waters? I did not deserve to see him alive nor to be at his burial, I am pierced by your funeral rites with higher losses. Why do I yet remind you of these things, dear surrogate-son Artachis, to add with my weepings to what you must weep? I ought rather to bring solace to my relative, but sorrow for the dead compels me to speak bitter things. He was not close to me from distant consanguinity, but was a near relative from the brother of my father. For Bertharius was my father, Hermenedfred was his: we were born from brothers, but we are not in the same world. Or you, dear nephew, give me back the peaceful close relation and be mine in love what he was before, and I ask that you often seek me with messages to the monastery and that that place be your help with God, that with your pious mother this perennial care may give you back honor on the starry throne. Now may the lord give you both to be happy in broad present health and future salvation.
Poets Corner 