He fell for a devil of a woman,
and she was a devil of a woman for him to fall for,
his own sister!
She was affectionate, you have to grant her that,
she’d wait for him by the door like a cat,
Now a cat will lick the coin-hard calluses
on a feller’s feet,
’cause it thinks of him as family,
and family gets groomed—
maybe it happened kind of like that?
The pair of them sat in the tavern
enjoying a day-drunk
with some pretty coarse company.
He rose up, wine-fed fire in his blood,
like an ogre lording it over some dwarves.
Standing at his full unsteady height,
it seemed to him he could see for miles.
Her laughter fanned his intoxicated flames.
A craggy crown of gold-veined stone
grew high on his head.
The other drunks, delighted, squealed.
“God damn, if I ain’t the devil hiimself,”
said he, and hellfire spat from his wine-glass.
A storm began roaring like the end of the world,
lightning kindled a hillside grove
and the wind howled out his secret:
incest!
They dragged him outside in the twilight,
street-kids pelted him with garbage,
screaming with glee.
Every year now on this same night
ghosts show, pious people hide
at home and pray.
Mourning really became his sister,
the rich innkeeper married her,
her tearful eyes will o’ the wisped
him into her swamp.
Every year on this haunted night,
the sinner who did it with his own kin,
staggers impalpably down twilight streets
in blood-red sunset.
His dreadful sin, his sudden end,
put any normal post-mortem existence
out of the question.
He gives women such peculiar looks,
this wordless man with a skull for a head,
it makes them quite uncomfortable.
This poem is from Mildred Faintly’s translation of Else Lasker-Schüler’s first book of poetry, Styx, which can be purchased here.