English versions I

Cimitero Staglieno / Genova                                                       

for their hints to the translation thanks to Melissa Pritchard

                                                                               and Kate Wheeler

 

 

The grave-diggers hurry out

towards the bar, for their second coffee.

One re-checks his lottery coupon.

 

The hearses stand in line

across the parking lot: for everyone

the bell is rung.

 

The coffin and the floral decorations visible:

la differenza sotto gli occhi di tutti.

 

The drivers waiting by the car doors

sharing their little stories, deeply cheerful.

 

My hands, sticky from the sweetest brioche

in the whole town.

 

Inside the drowned girl                 

holds on, stony, to her lifebelt.

 

The mourning angel is a tall beauty

with a moving arrangement of the folds

which will never calm down.

 

The horror carved

in the hardest gentleness.

 

The 19th century a lobby

of worthies, larger than life-size.

 

The fighter for Italy’s unity

receives the honour of the plastic flowers.

 

In the army of the little graves,

life-stories ending at last places:

El Alamein, Monte Cassino, Mauthausen.

 

On terraces, the Allies’ tombstones

rank and file, very white:

paratroopers who jumped off

a twenty, twenty-two years old.

 

Some sanctuary lamps in the shadows 

of the protestant zone:

free of saints’ pictures

as the placards say.

But here no higher voice

calls to order,

not in the field of the childrens’ tombs,

where the wind has played with the angels,

decapitated a doll,

where the parents have been infirm for a long time

but the children still open their eyes

at the sulphur flash of the photographer.

 

The dead have a big heart.           

 

I’m walking and walking around in a circle,

to race off is not easy in this place.

 

A mini bus stops and the driver promises

that on his way back, sure, he’ll take me with him,

he hasn’t got the time-table in his head

but, as far as he knows, he’ll pass by again.

Two poems in English

for the following translations thanks to Henry Gould

Exactly, W.C.W.      (published in „Tankstellengedichte“)

I drank

the milk

left in the

fridge

It was so cold

so good

poured from afar

down my throat

so fast it was

hard to taste

hard to believe

that milk

Trakl  / Salzburg / 20th century     (unpublished)

The life of Georg Trakl ended in autumn 1914

at 27 years. In Galicia,

after two or three missions in military hospitals

against which neighter morphine nor cocaine

won any victories.

His favorite sister died young,

five more siblings died later,

without children of their own.

The eldest, Maria, survived them all.

She lived through World War Two,

and more recent Festspiele,

and when she passed away, at ninety,

bequeathed to her home town

some family silver

and a nice little mother-

of-pearl-ornated

pistol.