Author: Reiner Kunze
Translator: Kay McBurney
CHILDHOOD MEMORY
When the swallows gathered to fly away,
the bird-barbed wire
strung between the electricity poles
fenced off the village from the sky
And the people were
imprisoned, sentenced
to winter
To telegraph wires
with no birdsong
To the empty nest
within their breast
When the swallows gathered
and their tail- and wingtips
marked the border
UNREAL MAY DAY
The cherry and pear trees flowered in such abundance
that they metamorphosed
into white clouds
Enblossomed, the village
floated up
With our white hair
we affected belonging
and became weightless
THE LINDEN IS IN BLOOM, AND IT IS NIGHT
The air … so warm and deathly still
Adalbert Stifter
The linden is in bloom, and it is night
The droning bees are silent now, instead
the air is teeming with stars
Man, that itinerant beekeeper flitting by night to pastures new,
the bolts of his hives slid into place, air flaps open,
wheels rasping,
hungers
for other honey
He has measured the curvature of the firmament
and sets off
to those distant shimmering swarms
Eve’s genes murmuring within him
But no matter how far he extends the radius of his heaven’s sphere
into boundless space, he will only ever fly
along the inside
If we wanted to understand the otherness of the world,
we would have to be
other
We humans under linden trees, in bloom,
at night
AFTER THE WAR
The farmers hoed over the harvested fields
until the furrow mounds
were trenches
Strangers who dared
venture too close were shown
the horsewhip
Hunkering in the undergrowth,
we waited in the wood
until above the smouldering haulm fires
the moon rose
and to our hungry mind’s eye
an unattainable,
ember-split
potato glowed
STELE
What
I
have
seen
no-one
should
see
no-one
should
have
witnessed
this
Though
anyone
who
did
see
it
would
have
been
better
off
dying
soon
[Varlam Shalamov / Kolyma]
Reiner Kunze, Lindennacht. S. Fischer Verlag, 2007.