Six Etudes

Author: Friederike Mayröcker
Translator: Donna Stonecipher

and everyone asks, what are you reading these days &c.,
while the little skull = little bird bill, on the doormat. All kinds
of night pills, &c., aussi the decaying dark-blue hyacinth in the
glass . . . back then ’54 in Salzburg I set off for London, 1
vehement spring, we found 1 hotel room to say good-bye: my
memories faded, &c., don’t remember what happened there . . .
I didn’t want, you know, I did not want to go away at all,
didn’t want to leave you, but I wasn’t crying about that,
when will I turn into 1 swallow. Rolled up in a ball the dirty laundry
on the piano, oh I wandered, lost, while the lea strewn with
leaves: this forsakenness of my eyes, it’s all just bricolage

the gullet of the PRIMAVERA the stems of the white
bellflowers, should we loosen the twine around the neck of the
bundled bellflowers
so the nodding flowers bunched together in the glass in this
glittering morning as if deathbells = GLAS (french) as if
strangled, these glittering flickering harbingers of early spring
&c., there where little grasses graze on a flood of tears, the
rosy dawn 1 pink veil over the flanks/cliffs of . . .

oh the trembling autumn everlastings in the valley, as they
emerge from the village in gray jackets, walking by the fields
of wild apple trees, oh with Mother back then, not much was
said, through the garden where with garden shears and blue
apron. Mignonettes, protégée, say I, the woman waving, &c.,
such talks with Mother, toilsome walking the weather mild the
eyes of
the autumn everlastings, the trembling of the autumn
everlastings in the wind, piano practice
‘études’ . . . 1 pair of flowers from Kurtág on the way home,
practice of the season’s ‘études,’ namely 1 mountain that was
called Piano, &c.

Early spring’s columbine = gloves of our beloved lady

2 small white stones and underbrush in the flowerpot 1 tuft of
moss white forget-me-not eye you my blood corpuscle, say I,
this sm. silver tree of tinfoil on the floor with a wild thatch or
skull cut to rights with a sm. knife, trunk or nape, wears a
yellow string on its rootstock, shines like the sun — I
embedded myself on your pansy, on your pensée: how
MOUTHWATERING say I, when your branches lower steaming
hands to me: gloves in the hallway as Mimmo Paladino drew
them (shallow slopes) these roses devastation like a hunting
horn burrowed into the pillow buried in the pillow roses
devastation ponytail-bow silky vetch say I tender child fine
little lamb Michi M.

the blushing bloom: my little sibling language in the morning I
wake up green verbena of the heavens springtide’s little
grasses: little ghosts ‘green-torn with red’ = Bernadette H.,
with the moon’s sickle in my hand through the garden
imagination, how mouthwatering, in your quiet searching
words while rain-tears on the window, this constellation light
in my eyes, composed today 5 o’clock in the morning in the
eye of the south wind or the train of golden rain, I was
enchanted by . . .  (the sparse music book &c.)

radius, littlest beautiful speech, blushing bloom up to the neck
little bell little white bellflower in the cup in the glass namely
the little headlets almost suffocating headlets namely in the
glass in the cup SWARMING presented by a friend’s hand
radius with red thread twine bow (History) by a friend’s hand
SWARMING in the glass in the cup that the tears namely
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Invention no. 6 in E major through
the airs. 1 dark piano, bark of a hornbeam on the edge of the
lane, he says, the blushing bloom he says SWARMING white
bellflowers let’s say, head to head let’s say, with whispering
little headlets let’s say and how they touch each other namely
SWARMING: ironing coiffures, with white hands body to body,
he says, filament to filament in the cup in the glass, so sheet
music with pink plastic cover, right? flood of tears let’s say, he
says, SWARMING let’s say, he says, the tears the toothlets
namely suckling piglets . . . Judas-thinkers and -turnkeys sheet
music fiery rain, the green verbena of the heavens’ banks,
heavens’ little grasses of springtide &c.
Blown-out warm-windlets, how mouthwatering

From Friederike Mayröcker, études, Suhrkamp 2013
Translation © Donna Stonecipher