Tag: German

Let molecules race along
rolling their rounds of dice.
Forget fiddling, being precise.
Just ecstasy, please, all night long.

After Christian Morgenstern, Galgenlieder

Laß die Moleküle rasen, 
was sie auch zusammenknobeln! 
Laß das Tüfteln, laß das Hobeln, 
heilig halte die Ekstasen.

***
This is tough. Knobeln is to game, tüfteln is to do finicky work, but hobeln is to plane, as in carpentry. It’s nonsense verse but makes sense nonetheless. This ditty is drawn from Morgenstern’s own Introduction, but did not make it into Walter Arndt’s Songs from the Gallows, which dates from a now distant epoch when even guardians of high culture allowed for a little levity from time to time.

A fir standing alone
On a bare boreal height
Dozes, wrapped in a warm
Shroud of ice and snow,

Dreaming of a palm far
In the East, itself pining
Alone in silence at the edge
Of a sun-baked cliff.

After Heinrich Heine

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh’,
Ihn schläfert; mit weißer Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.

Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die fern in Morgenland
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand.