from Part II - Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / The New Poems: The Other Part
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2016
Let them believe that any woe we're bound
up in can be shed there in privacy.
No theater like this one can be found:
lift up the curtain — high — and there will be,
before the Chorus of the Night — which start
to voice their broadly endless song — that Hour
when lovers who are lying in her power
will rail at her and tear her dress apart.
They'll do it for that other Hour's sake
that bridles in the background, writhing, twisting —
one those she holds can neither still nor slake.
The Hour of Lovers bends toward that resisting
other Hour that at least
has what she found once in her lover, yet
more menacing, imbued with greater threat,
committed (and removed) as in some beast.
Der Fremde
Ohne Sorgfalt, was die Nächsten dächten,
die er müde nichtmehr fragen hieß,
ging er wieder fort; verlor, verließ —.
Denn er hing an solchen Reisenächten
anders als an jeder Liebesnacht.
Wunderbare hatte er durchwacht,
die mit starken Sternen überzogen
enge Fernen auseinanderbogen
und sich wandelten wie eine Schlacht;
andre, die mit in den Mond gestreuten
Dörfern, wie mit hingehaltnen Beuten,
sich ergaben, oder durch geschonte
Parke graue Edelsitze zeigten,
die er gerne in dem hingeneigten
Haupte einen Augenblick bewohnte,
tiefer wissend, daß man nirgends bleibt;
und schon sah er bei dem nächsten Biegen
wieder Wege, Brücken, Länder liegen
bis an Städte, die man übertreibt.
Und dies alles immer unbegehrend
hinzulassen, schien ihm mehr als seines
Lebens Lust, Besitz und Ruhm.
Doch auf fremden Plätzen war ihm eines
täglich ausgetretnen Brunnensteines
Mulde manchmal wie ein Eigentum.
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