translated from the German by Mildred Faintly
Mother
In July night a white star sings me a dirge,
in July night it rings out
a knell of light;
the humid darkness reaches down
its moist, exploring, shadowy hand,
trying to find my mother.
I feel how naked my body is,
I’m shoved off, like a boat from its dock,
leaving my motherland.
I never was this naked
since birth first bared me to Time,
I’m like a wilting flower left behind
when day’s left, standing abandoned
to this wide night, and the next, and the next,
trapped in vast Alone.
O God, I cry like a child,
my mother went home without me.
Black Bowanéh
a gypsy song for the goddess of night
My lips glow like coals,
my arms spread like fire—
take me back to my Granada,
to the sun of southern Spain
where first I learned to burn.
My own fierce blood is pain to my veins,
my blood is strong, like wine,
with madness and heat.
Is any red so warm as that of a pomegranate?
Is any warmth so red as that of a kiss in the night,
a night of love,
warm with the red heat of an unseen blush?
Against my dark gleaming skin
shimmers a necklace of shells,
my hair is braided with amber beads
like sun-colored pearls, like flickers of flame.
My soul quakes, as only earth can quake,
cracks open as dry earth cracks,
thirsty for cool wind,
summoned by the whisper of a river.
Hot winds moan like the very breath of craving,
terrible as the pain of craving.
Across the cliffs of Granada booms
the mating call of black Bowanéh.
Song of the Pan-Pipe
It was in a garden, possibly Eden,
a palm tickled the red depth
of a gladiolus’ chalice with a green spear of leaf
that flickered like a serpent’s tongue.
The silver reaping-hook of the moon
gleamed sneaky approval
like a faun’s tilted grin.
This living world was clasped,
held fast in pale, cold Saturn’s numbing rays—
who knew that night
would spurt purple dreams?
Hilarious, no? We two together,
tightened to each other like a pan-pipe’s reeds.
Before dawn blushed
we’d fathom the southernmost
of love’s deep notes.
Till It Bleeds
Despite a day that glowed like a coal,
the dark hour’s powerless,
no lulling in its lateness.
The night-blooming tuberose,
with sweet oppressive scent, prevents rest.
Its waxy white flowers, at stem’s end, redden
to the color of my blood, the petals flame—
not flowers, but flares.
Do you too jolt awake from anxiety dreams
in the middle of the night, with a cry
like a wild bird’s?
I see the whole world as through a red lens,
as if existence were a kind of hemorrhage;
my heart groans with a pain as real as hunger,
Death stares back at me with lamp-like eyes.
Does your soul grieve in the night like mine,
when the tuberose,
with all the perverse strength
in its swollen fleshy roots,
sweetly reeks, as if to drown you in flowers?
Does your soul gnaw and scratch
at your daytime life
till it bleeds?
Else Lasker-Schüler’s book Styx, in Mildred Faintly’s translation, is available in our bookstore here.