Translations from Christine Lavant
Christine Lavant was born in 1915, and lived in a village in the province of Carinthia. She suffered health problems from an early age, and this fact was to play a large role in her writing later in life. With her education cut short in her mid-teens, she was left to discover literature through her own initiative, and by 1945 took an interest in the work of Rilke. In the late 1940s, her first publications appeared under the name she had taken from her native valley (Lavanttal), and her first book of poems followed in 1956. Between this time and her death in 1973, Christine Lavant received Austria's most significant literary awards.
Christine Lavant was born in 1915, and lived in a village in the province of Carinthia. She suffered health problems from an early age, and this fact was to play a large role in her writing later in life. With her education cut short in her mid-teens, she was left to discover literature through her own initiative, and by 1945 took an interest in the work of Rilke. In the late 1940s, her first publications appeared under the name she had taken from her native valley (Lavanttal), and her first book of poems followed in 1956. Between this time and her death in 1973, Christine Lavant received Austria's most significant literary awards.
IF YOU HAVE TIME, quickly save my heart,
this bitterly wild apple,
before melancholy picks it from the bough,
to eat it over again each noon.
When did you invent this heavy beast?
Which of your seven days of creation
is to thank for the monster?
Why is Sunday called the Lord's Day?
Do you think it wouldn't come on Sunday?
O my God, it eats the candles in church
and the gold and silver saints,
all of them to the skin and hair.
From tomorrow on, everything is always already
darkened by it, for the sun falls
cowardly from its stalk and the earth grinds
its teeth to fight itself free.
Take my heart at once from its belly!
Roast it for yourself in Purgatory!
Don't let the creature chew it anymore,
this little apple.
*
FATHER, YOU GAVE ME weak hearing,
now you allow all human voices
to hide themselves behind the crackling thorns
which burn without words.
Must I, so alone, really cross
the bitter red sea?
What have you done with my guardian spirit
and what with all the strong prayers
of my gentle, brave mother?
Even as a child, I never trusted you,
because my ears never heard you
and restlessly lifted the warmth of my heart
to the nearby human voices.
You should leave me one of them!
When I chew the burning thorns,
when I traverse the bitter red sea
alone, will you then
allow me to understand the people over there?
*
WHO WILL HELP ME to starve tonight
and all the nights which may yet come?
The round moon makes a wide arc
away from me, I am already too slim for it.
How I would love it now to drop my eyes
like gravel from the window,
for a drunk down in the street
to tread them deep into first snow.
But even blind, I would still
know everything and see you leave
over again, for sparks climb
like stars of hunger from my crying.
*
EVEN DEATHLY TIRED, the sun
always finds the right position
to rise above the mountains.
Sharply, the olive wind splits
the foliage of alien trees.
At night, dishonest, radiant angels
pull the birdswarms
between moon and waters.
Everything in Heaven, on Earth,
receives and obeys a wisdom
secretly conveyed.
Why not my heart, my brain and my sleep?
Why not my mismeasured tongue,
too short to say your name,
too long for silence.
Why does my heart not know out and not in,
why does my brain always think in circles?
Why does my sleep with night peacock eyes
walk past yours?
Why is the tongue too short and too long?
It bitterly maims the sweetest name
and never climbs above the sobbing's
lowest point to words of the heart.
*
BUY US A GRAIN of reality!
We could at last eat black bread
instead of sugared angels.
I no longer wish to sleep hungry,
I never wish to salt
my murmuring stomach to punish the angels.
Bring a double brandy jug,
we must finally intoxicate ourselves
and greet each other face to face,
not be staggering forever from holy water.
I no longer wish to sleep thirsty,
I never wish to train
my cursing throat with vinegar to pray.
*
THROUGH THESE GLAZED AFTERNOONS
demon birds are whirling
toward mountains emerging
under the trembling sun.
Every shrub turns yellow with restlessness.
Fevered, listening, on brown hills
the woods have red crowns.
On the banks a strange wind collects
leaves from the meadow, and tendrils,
a light raft timidly floats
into black shivering water.
Nobody speaks to the earth.
Among frenzied birdswarms
the evening understands without speaking.
(Christine Lavant's poems appeared originally in books published by the Otto Mueller Verlag of Salzburg, Austria. The press kindly gave permission for sopme of these transaltions to be published in various magazines in the United States. My translations of three more poems can be found at http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/chorltongerman2.html )