Maybe these poems I have here traced
in your tongue you’ll at some point see
at later times, right up to your face,
And if so, that’d be dear to me.
And reading them, you don’t need to think,
Well, these are not quite up to date,
So you can skip right through in a blink,
Be done with them as fast as fate.
As this reading is not quite for sport
ain’t amusing for those that see
Well, now they’re being judged all in court
for their bygone idiocy.
The dumbness of these bygone times here,
As that’s now written in the rough,
They atone gravely, repent “sincere”
Their feelings say they’ve done enough.
So grave that we’d oft like to forget
And memory brings agony,
Therefore this book excavates, as yet,
old suffering, it’s plain to see.
You think you’re finally free, it’s through
No shadows coming from the past.
And you don’t think that what threatens you
Is the same pain, the suff’ring lasts.
And yet if they let you all forget
Again all of your old mistakes,
Right then a new puppeteer is met,
And you’ll be led to your new fates.
Well, you’re all so easily ensnared
after your war gives way to zen.
Thus I’ll have to warn you to take care
so you won’t be made fools again.
For the second time you have now sunk
In exactly the same crater
And if someone were to get you drunk
It recurs sooner or later.
In contrast to other poets’ dance,
That often leaves you in a haze,
I would like you sober from this trance,
Please do not feel that you’re ablaze!
And if my talking-to’s quite well versed,
At last you’ll see your old mistakes,
Then I will feel richly reimbursed
And it’s my pleasure that awakes.
Literary translation: Samuel Haecker