Ernst Stadler – In the early morning

In the early morning

The silhouette of your body is dark in the morning in front of the dim light
Of the curtained blinds. Lying in bed, I feel your face turned towards me host-like.
When you unwound yourself from my arms, your whispered “I must go” only reached the farthest gates of my dream –
Now I see, as if through a veil, your hand, as it lightly brushes the white shirt down your breasts ...
The stockings ... now the skirt ... Your hair gathered ... you’ve become a stranger, adorned for the day and the world ...
I open the door quietly ... kiss you ... you nod, distant already, a farewell ... and you are gone.
I hear, already in bed again, your gentle steps fade away in the staircase,

I am again captive of your body’s scent, which flows out of the pillows warmly and into my senses.
The morning is getting brighter. The curtain billows. Young wind and first sun want to enter.
Noise rises ... Early morning music ... sung gently into morning dreams, I fall asleep.

– Ernst Stadler (1883-1914)

From: Der Aufbruch, 1914, published shortly before the author died in World War I. Translated by Johannes Beilharz. The German original can be found here.

Franz Kafka – Cool and Hard

Cool and hard is the day today.
The clouds congeal.
The winds are tugging ropes.
People congeal.
The steps sound metallic
On ore stones,
And the eyes see
Wide white lakes.

In the old little town there are
Small bright Christmas houses,
Their colorful windows look out
Over the snow-blown square.
On the moonlit square
A man walks silently in the snow,
His great shadow blown up
The houses by the wind.

People who walk across dark bridges,
Past saints
With dim candles.

Clouds that drift across a grey sky
Past churches
With towers in twilight.
A man leans against the ashlar parapet
And looks into the evening water,
Hands on old stones.

– Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Johannes Beilharz (© 2020)

(A poem by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) – who is, of course, not really known for poetry – which undoubtedly places him in the literary environment of expressionism. It is contained in a letter by Kafka dated November 9, 1903, in which the 20-year-old writes to his schoolmate Oskar Pollak about “some verses” that he might “read at a good hour”.)

German original

Stefan George – I am the One

I am the One and am the Twain
I am the womb I am the sire
I am the blow and am the slain
I am the wood I am the fire
I am the seer I am the sight
I am the sheath and am the haft
I am the shadow and the right
I am the bow I am the shaft
I am the rich I am the needer
I am the semblance and the heart
I am the altar and the pleader
I am a finish and a start.

– Stefan George

Translated from the German by Carol North Valhope and Ernst Morwitz. From: Stefan George, Poems, Schocken Books, 1967 (originally published by Pantheon Books in 1943)

See the original in the preceding post.