Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (17 page)

Gracious Lady,

Th

at ever since I’ve walked on air.

Did he kiss me? Yes, and well:

Tandaradee!

Look how red my lips are still.

With the wild fl owers

Th

ere my love

Made a lavish bed for me;

Th

is bed of ours,

Should you pass above,

Will make you laugh most heartily.

By the roses you can trace—

Tandaradee!

Where my head lay in that place.

Had anyone seen us

Lying there,

Wa lt h e r von de r Vo g e lw e i de
123

Deitz 1st pages.indd 123

Deitz 1st pages.indd 123

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

(God grant none did!) I’d be ashamed.

What passed between us

Is our aff air,

Never to be known or named

But by us and one small bird—

Tandaradee!

Which may never breathe a word.

Michael Hamburger, 1955

124
G e r m a n

Deitz 1st pages.indd 124

Deitz 1st pages.indd 124

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

Joh a nn Wolfg a ng von Goethe
(1749–1832)

To Werther

So once again, poor tear-bedabbled shadow,

You venture in the light of day?

And here, in blossoms of the fresher meadow,

Confront me and not turn away?

Alive as in the early dawn, when tender

Chill of a misty fi eld bestirred the two,

When both were dazzled by the west in splendor

Aft er the drudging summer days were through.

My doom: endure. And yours: depart forlorn.

Is early death, we wonder, much to mourn?

In theory how magnifi cent, man’s fate!

Th

e day agreeable, the night so great.

Yet we, in such a paradise begun,

Enjoy but briefl y the amazing sun,

And then the battle’s on: vague causes found

To struggle with ourself, the world around.

Neither completes the other as it should:

Th

e skies are gloomy when our humor’s good;

Th

e vista glitters and we’re glum enough.

Joy near at hand, but we—at blindman’s bluff .

At times we think it ours: some darling girl!

Borne on a fragrant whirlwind, off we whirl.

Th

e young man, breezy as in boyhood’s prime,

Like spring itself goes strutting in springtime.

Astounded, charmed, “Who’s doing this, all for me?”

Claims like a cocky heir the land and sea.

Goes footloose anywhere, without a thought;

No wall, no palace holds him, even if caught.

As swallows skim the treetops in a blur,

Joh a n n Wol f g a ng von G oe t h e
125

Deitz 1st pages.indd 125

Deitz 1st pages.indd 125

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

He hovers round, in rings, that certain her.

Scans, from the height he means to leave at last,

Earth for an answering gaze, that holds him fast.

First warned too soon, and then too late, he’ll swear

His feet are bound, traps planted everywhere.

Sweet meetings are a joy, departure’s pain.

Meeting again-what hopes we entertain!

Moments with her make good the years away.

Yet there’s a treacherous parting, come the day.

You smile, my friend, eyes welling. Still the same!

Yours, what a ghastly avenue of fame.

We dressed in mourning when your luck ran out

And you deserted, leaving ours in doubt.

For us, the road resuming God knows where,

Th

rough labyrinths of passion, heavy air,

Still drew us on, bone-tired, with desperate breath

Up to a fi nal parting. Parting’s death!

True: it’s aff ecting when the poets sing

Willow
or such, to sweeten suff ering.

Some god—though man’s half guilty, hurt past cure—

Grant him a tongue to murmur: I endure.

Elegy

Th

ough most men suff er dumbly, yet a god

Gave me a tongue to utter all my pain.

What’s to be hoped from seeing her again?

Hoped from the still-shut blossoms of today?

Which opens, heaven or hell, around me? When

I guess, my thoughts go wandering every way.

But steady-there! She’s there, at heaven’s door;

Her arms enfold and raise me, as before.

126
G e r m a n

Deitz 1st pages.indd 126

Deitz 1st pages.indd 126

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

So then the heavens are open, take me in

As if deserving life forever blest.

No wish, no longing, and no might-have-been

Stinted: the very goal of all my quest.

Eyes dwell delighted on that loveliest thing,

Th

eir tears subsiding at the passionate spring.

Didn’t the day go by on fl ashing feathers!

Didn’t it send the minutes skimming there!

Our sign, the kiss at evening—and what weathers

It promised: fair tonight, tomorrow fair.

Hours were like sisters, lingering as they passed,

Each face alike, each diff erent from the last.

Our fi nal kiss, so shuddering sweet, it tore

Th

e sheerest of all fi ber, heart’s desire.

My foot, abrupt or dragging, dodged her door

As if an angel waved that sword of fi re.

Eyes frozen on the dusky ruts go glum.

Turn, and her door’s a darkness, shut and dumb.

My soul’s a darkness, shut and dumb—as though

Th

is heart had never opened, never found

Hours of delight beside her, such a glow

As all the stars of heaven let dance around.

Now gloom, remorse, self-mockery—clouds of care

Clutch at it, sluggish, in the sluggish air.

What of the world—it’s done for? Cliff s of granite

Crowned shadowy with the sacred grove—they’re vapor?

No harvest-moon? Green delta country (can it?)

Turn with its trees to ash, like burning paper?

Th

at grandeur curved above us—all undone?—

Now with its thousand clouds, and now with none.

Joh a n n Wol f g a ng von G oe t h e
127

Deitz 1st pages.indd 127

Deitz 1st pages.indd 127

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

A form there!—rare and airy, silken, bright,

Floats forth, among the clouds in grave ballet,

An angel in blue noon, or—? No, a white

Slim body—hers!—inclining far away.

You saw her lean so at the gala ball;

Among the loveliest, lovelier far than all.

A ruse for moments only. Don’t suppose

Th

e empty air a match for her embraces.

Back to your heart of hearts, that better knows

Her and the changing miracle her face is.

In every guise she’s greater. Like a fl ame,

Forever varying and the very same.

Once by the gate she waited; in she brought me;

Onward from joy to keener joy we passed.

Th

e last last kiss—but how she ran and caught me,

Pressed to my mouth an even laster last.

Still that indelible image of desire

Burns on my heart in script of living fi re—

My heart (its battlement a height securing

Her for itself alone, itself for her)

Only for her is happy in enduring;

Knows it has life by stirring if she stir.

Confi ned in love, is free and on its own;

Praising, with each pulsation, her alone,

Because: when dead to love, and hardly caring

Whether another’s love could sink or save it

—She came. And my old verve in dreaming, daring,

Resolving, up-and-doing—this she gave it.

If ever love restored a human soul,

It took my shrunken self and made it whole.

And all through her! In mind and body’s gloom

I mooned lugubrious, lurching and agrope.

128
G e r m a n

Deitz 1st pages.indd 128

Deitz 1st pages.indd 128

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

Look where I would, saw shuddering visions loom

Over the heart’s eroded acres. Hope

—Suddenly, out of hopelessness—was there:

A girl with the light of morning on her hair.

To God’s own peace, the peace that here below

Passeth all understanding (so the preacher)

I’m minded to compare that heady glow

Of fervor, being near a certain creature.

Th

e heart’s at ease; not one distraction blurs

Th

at deepest sense, the sense of
wholly hers
.

In the pure ocean of the soul, a comber

Flings itself, out of thankfulness, self-giving,

Toward something Purer, Higher—Grand Misnomer

However named—to approach the ever-living.

We call it,
being reverent
. And its fl ight

Sweeps me, when I’m beside her, height to height.

Before her gaze, like sun where winter lingers,

Before her breathing, like the stir of May,

Self-love, that steely ice that digs its fi ngers

Deep in our rigid psyche, melts away.

No self-concern, no self-importance where

She sets a foot. Th

ey squirm away, that pair.

As if I heard her, urgent: “Hour by hour

Life gives itself, exuberant, unbidden.

Yesterday’s meaning is a withered fl ower;

Tomorrow!—who can live there? Where’s it hidden?

Today though—if I quailed with sunset near

Never a sun but showed me something dear.

“Th

en do as I do: Look with knowing pride

Each moment in the face. But no evasion!

Keep every nerve a-tingle! Open-eyed

Joh a n n Wol f g a ng von G oe t h e
129

Deitz 1st pages.indd 129

Deitz 1st pages.indd 129

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

Rush to it all: day’s eff ort, love’s elation.

But where you are, be wholly. Be a child.

You’re
all
then. Undefeatable,” she smiled.

Easy, I thought, for you to say! Some grace

Shows you forever as the moment’s friend.

Anyone near you for a moment’s space

Is fortune’s favorite—till the moment end.

As end it does! In panic I depart:

You and your pretty wisdom break the heart!

Now miles and miles between us. If I could,

How should I live this minute? Who’s to say?

It off ers much desirable and good

—All like a shabby pack to shrug away.

Invincible longing dogs me as I go.

Tears are the one philosophy I know.

So let them have their way now, unrepressed.

No chance they’ll damp the furnaces within.

Embattled there, all’s berserk in my breast

With life and death locked grisly. Which to win?

Herbs dull our suff ering when the body’s ill,

But if the soul lack nerve, lack even will—?

Or worse, lack understanding? Years without her!

Whose image haunts me in a thousand ways.

Sun on her hair, the falling dusk about her—

Th

e memories lag, or dwindle off in haze.

What good’s all this? What comfort? shaken so

By all this coming, going, ebb and fl ow?

Well, leave me here, companions (or I bore you),

Here on the moor alone, with rocks and moss.

You, ever onward, upward! All’s before you,

Th

e whole wide earth, the heaven so broad across!

130
G e r m a n

Deitz 1st pages.indd 130

Deitz 1st pages.indd 130

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

Make your investigations, scour and scout.

Nature has clues to shuffl

e and sort out.

All’s lost to me. Myself lost. Now ignore a

Man the gods coddled with a “lucky star”!

Th

ey put me to the proof with that Pandora

So rich in gift s, in havoc richer far.

Th

ey pressed me to sweet lips that gave and gave;

Th

en crushed and fl ung me headlong. Toward the grave.

Reconciliation

Passion, and then the anguish. And with whom

To soothe you, heavy heart that lost so much?

Love’s hour escaped, unstoppered like perfume?

Th

e loveliest—all for nothing—within touch?

Cloudy the mind; mere muddle all it tries.

And the great world adrift before the eyes.

Th

en music to the fore like angels swarming,

A million tones in galaxy. We surrender

All of our inner fort to forces storming

—Irresistibly overrun with splendor.

Th

e eye goes damp: in longings past tomorrow

We guess at the infi nite worth of song and sorrow.

And so the heart, disburdened, in a fl ash

Knows: I endure, and beat, and pound with pleasure!

Gives itself over utterly, in rash

Th

anks for the windfall, life. No common treasure.

Yearns: could it only last!—our feeling of

Fortune on fortune doubled, song and love.

John Frederick Nims, 1969

Joh a n n Wol f g a ng von G oe t h e
131

Deitz 1st pages.indd 131

Deitz 1st pages.indd 131

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:16 AM

Chr isti a n Morgenster n
(1871–1914)

Maids on Saturday

Th

ey hang them over the ledge,

Th

e carpets large and small;

In their minds they start to beat

Up masters, one and all.

Wild with satisfaction,

In rage true and berserk,

Th