Jacket 18 — August 2002   |   # 18  Contents   |   Homepage   |  Catalog   |

Ingeborg Bachmann

Three poems

translated by Johannes Beilharz

Bruderschaft

[Brotherhood]

Each and every thing cuts wounds,
and neither of us has forgiven the other.
Hurting like you and hurtful,
I lived towards you.

Every touch augments
the pure, the spiritual touch;
we experience it as we age,
turned into coldest silence.

Verordnet diesem Geschlecht keinen Glauben

[Do not decree faith on this race]

Do not decree faith on this race,
stars, ships and smoke are enough;
it is concerned with things, determines
stars and mathematical infinity,
and a trait, call it trait of love,
emerges more purely from it all.

The heavens hang limp, and stars come loose
from the juncture with moon and night.

Nach dieser Sintflut

[After this deluge]

After this deluge
I wish to see the dove
saved,
nothing but the dove.

I would drown in this sea
if it did not fly away,
if it did not return with the leaf
in the final hour.

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