It feels like I am in one of those creative lulls which leads to translation. After two productive years (2015 and 2016), I didn’t write a single poem in 2017. Someone burdened with the vocation of becoming or staying a poet would be fraught at blank pages of papier vide que la blancheur défend, all the more so if those pages are on a pixelated screen.
Not I. My language work goes on day in and day out, usually leading nowhere, which is roughly where I expect it to go. Fortunately for me this work is more like play. It often takes the form of endless tinkering with foreign languages, including ones I have only inklings of. Poetic translations, which I have elsewhere defined as poems about poems, are one among many reflexes of that phase of play.
Arbitrarily entitled Afterwards in English, this minor Liebeslied by Bertold Brecht was written in 1950, later put into art song by the East German composer Paul Dessau. It is about as simple as a poem can be, ABAB quatrains, that ancient vehicle for folk lyric. Equally simple is the emotion conveyed, the radiance with which the world is imbued when once has experienced a night, one presumes, of romantic passion. There is so much to say that it is better to say little.
***
Afterwards, I strode alone
into the full light of day
and saw, with eyes of my own,
the sheer joy of those at play.
About that secret hour,
know only that within
I feel a new-born power,
beauty in lip and limb.
Greener, the trees and meadows,
more fragrant the flower,
fresher the water which flows
down my skin as I shower.
After Bertolt Brecht
Als ich nachher von dir ging
An dem großen Heute
Sah ich, als ich sehn anfing
Lauter lustige Leute.
Und seit jener Abendstund
Weißt schon, die ich meine
Hab ich einen schönern Mund.
Und geschicktere Beine.
Grüner ist, seit ich so fühl
Baum und Strauch und Wiese
Und das Wasser schöner kühl
Wenn ich’s auf mich gieße.