For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to re-activate my German, this by way of preparing for a trip to Innsbruck. One fruit has been this self-translation of an old poem, the founding experience of which dates from forty years ago when I was especially sensitive, indeed vulnerable to the “phenomenology of love”. A friend helped with some syntactical and lexicological issues. Below the poem and after its source is an index of the poems and texts I have written in German, usually in the weeks following prior visits to Innsbruck, Vienna or Berlin.
Ein Zündholz,
dessen Flamme
geschützt vor Sorge
in den hohlgemachten
Händen unserer
unheimlichen
Umarmung,
machen wir
die Mauern
mit unserem Geflüster
flackern.
After My Own English
A match
whose flare
is closed from fear
in the cupped hands
of our uncanny
holding, we make
the walls flicker
with our whispers.
***
INDEX OF WRITING IN GERMAN
Fahrplan
Zeitverschiebung in Berlin
Der Respekt
Wie Länder
Drahtseilkünstler
Zwei Texte auf Deutsch