Lot's Wife
Anna Akhmatova


The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late far a last sight

Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.

She turned, and looking on the bitter view
Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain;
Into transparent salt her body grew,
And her quick feet were rooted in the plain.

Who would waster tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.

Translated by Richard Wilbur

Los Ojos
Antonio Machado

I.

Cuando murío su amada

penso en hacerse viejo

en la mansion cerrada,

solo, con su memoria y el espejo

donde ella se miraba un claro dia.

Como el oro en el arca del avaro,

penso que quardaria

todo un ayer en el espejo claro.

Ya el tiempo para el no correria.

II.

Mas pasado el primer aniversario,

como era—preguntó—pardos o negross,

sus ojos? Glaucos?...Grises?

Como eran, Santo Dios! que no recuerdo?...

III.

Salio a al calle un dia

de primera, y paseo en silencio

su doble luto, el corazon cerrado...

IV.

De una ventana en el sombrio hueco

vio unos ojos brillar. Bajó los suyos

y siguió su camino...Como ésos!

______________________________________

The Eyes

Antonio Machado

I.

When his beloved died

he thought he'd just grow old,

shutting himself in the house

alone, with memories and the mirror

that she had looked in one bright day.

Like gold in the miser's chest,

he thought he'd keep all yesterday

in the clear mirror intact.

For him time's flow would cease.

II.

But after a year had passed,

he began to wonder about her eyes:

"Were they brown or black? Or green? ...Or grey?

What were they like? Good God! I can't recall..."

III.

One day in Spring he left the house

and took his double mourning down the street

in silence, his heart tight shut...

In the dim hollow of a window

he caught a flash of eyes. He lowered his...

and walked right on...Like those!

Translated by Alan S. Trueblood

______________________________________

The Eyes

Antonio Machado

When his beloved died

he decided to grow old

and shut himself inside

the empty house, alone

with his memories of her

and the big sunny mirror

where she'd fixed her hair.

This great block of gold

he hoarded like a miser,

thinking here, at least,

he'd lock away the past,

keep one thing intact.

But around the first anniversary,

he began to wonder, to his horror,

about her eyes: Were they brown or black,

or grey? Green? Christ! I can't say ...

One Spring morning, something gave in him;

shouldering his twin grief like a cross,

he shut the front door, turned into the street 

and had walked just ten yards, when, from a dark close,

he caught a flash of eyes. He lowered his hat-brim

and walked on ... yes, they were like that; like that ...

Translated by Don Paterson

___________________________________________________________

[Caminante, son tus huellas]
Antonio Machado


Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino:
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

______________________________

[Traveler, your footprints]
Antonio Machado


Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back 
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.

Translated by Nary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney

_________________________________________

Road
Antonio Machado


Traveller, your footprints are
the only path, the only track:
wayfarer, there is no way,
there is no map or Northern star,
just a blank page and a starless dark;
and should you turn around to admire
the distance that you've made today
the road will billow into dust.
No way on and no way back,
there is no way, my comrade: trust
your own quick step, the end's delay,
the vanished trail of your own wake,
wayfarer, sea-walker, Christ.

A Version by Don Paterson

_________________________________________

Kleine Aster
Gottfried Benn

Ein ersofferner Bierfahrer wurde auf den Tisch gestemmt.

Irgendeiner hatte ihm eine dunkelhellila Aster

zwischen die Zähne geklemmt.

Als ich von der Brust aus

unter der Haut

mit einen langen Messer

Zunge und Gaumen herausschnitt,

muß ich sie angestoßen haben, denn sie glitt

in das nebenliegende Gehirm.

Ich packte sie ihm in die Brusthöhle

zwischen die Holzwolle,

als man zunähte.

Trinke dich satt in deiner Vase!

Ruhe sanft,

kleine Aster!

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Little Aster

Gottfried Benn

A drowned drayman was hoisted on to the slab.

Someone had jammed a lavender aster

between his teeth.

As I made the incision up from the chest

with a long knife

under the skin

to cut out tongue and gums, 

I must have nudged it because it slipped

into the brain lying adjacent.

I packed it into the thoracic cavity

with the excelsior

when he was sewn up.

Drink your fill in your vase!

Rest easy,

little aster!

Translated by Michael Hofmann

Open Wardrobe
Günter Grass


The shoes are at the bottom.
They are afraid of a beetle
On the way out,
Of a penny on the way back,
Of a beetle and a penny on which they might tread
Till it impresses itself.
At the top is the home of the headgear.
Take heed, be wary, not headstrong.
Incredible feathers,
what was the bird called,
Where did its eyes roll
When it knew that its wings were too gaudy?
The white balls asleep in the pockets
Dream of moths.
Here a button in missing,
In this belt the clasp grows weary.
Doleful silk,
Asters and other inflammable flowers,
Autumn becoming a dress.
Every Sunday filled with flesh
And the salt of folded linen.
Before the wardrobe falls silent, turns into wood,
A distant relation of pine-trees,—
Who will wear the coat
One day when you're dead?
Who move his arm in the sleeve,
Anticipate every movement?
Who will turn up the collar,
Stop in front of the pictures
And be alone under the windy cloche?

Translated by Michael Hamburger

Sebastian in Dream
Georg Trakl


Mother bore this infant in the white moon,
In the nut-tree"s shade, in the ancient elder's,
Drunk with the poppy's juice, the thrush's lament;
And mute
With compassion a bearded face bowed down to that woman,

Quiet in the window's darkness; and ancestral heirlooms,
Old household goods,
Lay rotting there; love and autumnal reverie.

So dark was the day of the year, desolate childhood,
When softly the boy to cool waters, to silver fishes walked down,
Calm and countenance;
When stony he cast himself down where black horses raced,
In the grey of the night his star possessed him;

Or holding his mother's icy hand
He walked at nightfall across St. Peter's autumnal churchyard,
While a delicate corpse lay still in the bedroom's gloom
And he raised cold eyelids towards it.

But he was a little bird in leafless boughs,
All the churchbells long in dusking November,
His father's illness, when asleep he descended the dark of the
     turning stair.

                              *     *     *

Peace of the soul. A lonely winter evening.
The dark shapes of shepherds by the ancient pond;
Little child in the hut of straw; o how softly
Into black fever his face sank down.
Holy night.

Or holding his father's horny hand
In silence he walked up Calvary Hill
And in dusky rock recesses
The man's blue shape would pass through his legend,
Blood run purple from the wound beneath his heart.
O how softly the Cross rose up in the dark of his soul.

Love; when in black corners the snow was melting,
Gaily a little breeze was caught in the ancient elder,
In the walnut-tree's vault of shade;
And in silence his rosy angel appeared to that boy;

Gladness; when in cool rooms a sonata sounded at nightfall,
In the beams' dark brown
A blue butterfly crept from its silver chrysalis.

O the nearness of death. From the stony wall
A yellow head bowed down, silent that child,
Since in that month the moon decayed.

                              *     *     *

Rose-coloured Easter bells in the burial vault of the night,
And the silver voices of stars,
So that madness, dark and shuddering, ebbed from the sleeper's
     brow.

O how quiet to ramble along the blue river's bank,
To ponder forgotten things when in leafy boughs
The thrush's call brought strangeness into a word's decline.

Or holding an old man's bony hand
In the evening he walked to the crumbling city walls,
And that man in his black greatcoat carried a rosy child,
In the nut-tree's shade the spirit of evil appeared.

Groping his way over the green steps of summer. O how softly
In autumn's brown stillness the garden decayed,
Scent and sadness of the ancient elder,
When in Sebastian's shadow the angel's silver voice subsided.

Translated by Michael Hamburger

Sonnets to Orpheus

Part II: XXIX
Rainer Maria Rilke


Silent friend of many distances,
feel how your breath us still increasing space.
Among the beams of the dark belfries let
yourself ring out. What feeds on you

will grow strong upon this nourishment.
Be conversant with transformation.
From what experience have you suffered most?
Is drinking bitter to you, turn to wine.

Be, in this immeasurable night,
magic power at your senses' crossroad,
be the meaning of their strange encounter.

And if the earthly has forgotten you,
say to the still earth: I flow.
To the rapid water speak: I am.

Translated by M. D. Herter Norton

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Part II: XXIX
Rainer Maria Rilke


Silent friend of those far from us, feeling 
how your breath is still enlarging space,
fill the sombre belfry with your pealing.
What consumes you now is growing apace

stronger than the feeding strength it borrows.
Be, as Change will have you, shade or shine.
Which has grieved you most of all your sorrows?
Turn, if drinking's bitter, into wine.

Be, in this immeasurable night,
at your sense' cross-ways magic cunning,
be the sense of their mysterious tryst.

Add, should earthliness forget you quite, 
murmur to the quiet earth: I'm running.
Tell the running water: I exist.

Translated by J. B. Leishman

__________________________________________________

Part II: XXIX
Rainer Maria Rilke


Silent friend of many distances, feel 
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let the presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment this offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If the drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your senses in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

____________________________________________________

Being
Rainer Maria Rilke


Silent comrade of the distances,
Know that space dilates with your own breath;
ring out, as a bell into the Earth
from the dark rafters of its own high place —

then watch what feeds on you grow strong again.
Learn the transformations through and through:
what in your life has most tormented you?
If the water's sour, turn it into wine.

Our senses cannot fathom this night, so
be the meaning of their strange encounter;
at their crossing, be the radiant centre.

And should the world itself forget your name
say this to the still earth: I flow.
Say this to the quick stream: I am.

Translated by Don Paterson