Two

Both the Sicilies
and olives in black and green.
Two shades of wine,
two fatherlands:
the day called yester and
the one called tomorrow.
Outside
my friends go by
with their several realities,
my enemies
with their common purpose.



Günter Eich
Angina Days: Selected Poems
Princeton University Press
Tradução de Michael Hoffman

Old Postcards

1
This is where I wanted to set up tramlines,
and swing on the chain
around the war memorial.
A warning to deaf-mutes.
A homily to bakers
stretching in the pale morning wind.

2
The scene gradually
darkened by distemper,
paper and street
incised
by the same knife.
Macadamization and death
plan ahead.

3
Two hieroglyphs—
a bicycle path
to the ruined castle.
But we’re all right.
We’re playing in the black sand.
We’re masticating bread
to seal the cracks in the wallpaper.

4
Bagpipes on the anniversary of Sedan,
three-oh-four,
the lindens bloodshot.
Morning morning morning.

5
Hold on
to the tanners’ ropes
till the angels come
with peaked caps and pashminas,
to go by the evidence on the stones,
the reliable
impression of smoke.



Günter Eich
Angina Days: Selected Poems
Princeton University Press
Tradução de Michael Hoffman

Munich-Frankfurt Express

Bridge over the Danube at Ingolstadt,
the Altmühl valley, slates at Solnhofen,
connections at Treuchtlingen —
and in between
forests in which autumn is a bonfire,
roads going out into pain,
clouds reminiscent of conversations,
flashing by villages built of my desire
to grow old in the vicinity of your voice.

Between departure times
the properties of our love are spread out.
There
the places of the world remain undivided,
not surveyed, and not findable.

The train, however,
barrels through Gunzenhausen and Ansbach,
the lunar landscapes of memory
— the summery song
of the frogs of Ornbau —
all in our wake.



Günter Eich
Angina Days: Selected Poems
Princeton University Press
Tradução de Michael Hoffman

The end of summmer

Who would want to live without the comfort of trees!

Aren’t we lucky that they are mortal!
The peaches have been picked, the plums are coloring up
while time swoops under the bridge.

I confide my despair to the bird formations heading south.
Calmly they measure out their portion of eternity.
Their routes
become visible as a dark compulsion in the foliage.
The moving of wings colors the fruit.

We must be patient.
Soon the sky-writing of birds will be deciphered.
Don’t you taste the copper penny under your tongue?



Günter Eich
Angina Days: Selected Poems
Princeton University Press
Tradução de Michael Hoffman

The Present

Glimpsed on various days,
the poplars on Leopoldstrasse,
but always autumnal,
always wraiths of misty sunshine
or bits of rain-embroidery.

Where are you, when you walk at my side?
Always wraiths from distant times,
past and to come:
dwelling in caves,
the endless troglodytic period,
the bitter taste of the columns of Heliogabalus
and the hotels of St. Moritz.
The gray caves, tenements
where happiness begins,
gray happiness.

The pressure of your arm answering me,
the archipelago, the chain of islands, latterly sandbanks,
dimly perceived residue
of the sweetness of our conjunction.

(But you are of my blood,
over these stones, beside the garden shrubs,
old men resting on the park bench
and the rumbling of the number 6 tram,
anemone, present
with the power of water in your eye
and the freshness of your lip.)

And always wraiths, spinning us in,
suspension of the present,
unvalid love,
proof that we are subject to chance,
sparse poplar leaves
factored in by the municipality,
autumn in the gutters,
the questions posed by happiness satisfactorily answered.



Günter Eich
Angina Days: Selected Poems
Princeton University Press
Tradução de Michael Hoffman