Short Poems

My soil lies thirsty and hot, with parched and languishing lips — blue spring did not shake out over her the blessed rain-holding sieves .
The clear summer failed to resound over her with lightning nd thundering bugle .
— Ah, in vain, in vain do fields yearn for a sated song of ripe rye .
Not a sated but a hungry melody to creviced ears of fences ... And the arms of the windmills stiffen — arms wrung in anguish...

I shall not hang my harp on trees — to all winds is given its sound. Even in my dream I possess no land of honey and milk any more .
In my soul a little mouse scratches — either father's or grandfather's tune; but the door of my own Sabbath the weekdays have bolted with a star .
Grind me, grind me to a granule, grinding stones of all time, if only thus the morning star will ripen like an apple .

Cold, bubbling beauty of white, wintry waters pours down, pours over my holy, July mood. Peasants at harvest sing preparedness for the winter. The inkwell on my table glows with sun-blue desires for singing. The summery silken curtains on the rods sing to end the last summerwinds over the basket of hyacinths at my feet.

I chase the kid into the pasture to graze at ease — the white kid that I bought for two silver coins, for two silver coins.
But the kid wanders off through the meadows and I follow. Through old forests, through vacant fields we stray the entire week, the entire week.
And on Friday, at noon, the kid halts of a sudden, and I see: a land, far away, outspread in blue light, in blue light.
A land — a land where hinds are hovering on every hillock, where the buffalo sleeps at the side of the weasel; a land — a land, tremulous, dreamy, that may vanish at the slightest touch.

O foremost, most wonderful among cities! You dominate with your railroads and factories, and stone buildings, tunnels, ships and bridges. Your breath — steam and electricity.
Magnet-like, you draw and draw unto yourself and vampire-like you suck with your glances. Pale, like your sky, your imbedded Hudson flows by factories and huge walls.
How marvelous your sorcery and intoxication! How blind your day on your hard steel breast! How light your night! How unfettered your lust!

The song of the people, my life-song I sang in foreign tones, in a foreign language. It strode toward the sky and rang weak and deafened by strange echoes.
The foreign country coldly and brutally sucked away my strength, in anguish I did not guard my treasure, the Veil remained unopened for me in the Sanctuary of Song.
With dew of anguish the wings are drenched, they are heavy and weary of the roaming path; others will unbolt the bars of the Sanctum in brighter days.

Among all the millions of human eyes the chosen pair in sweetness. Smooth hair, fragrant like soul — and above it the aureole of love.
A forehead, clear as a child's thought, and hands that never did caress me yet, and lips, where only truth is spoken and where every word is sweet song.
And in the two-and-twenty year old breast a heart that knew of no sin, and where the breath of the god of love daily writes anew his Tenth Commandment.
And in the blessed, deep heart a stream of pity for my sea of pain.

Sorrow engulfed me as the tender, green fir trees the snow with its heavy, thick prayer-shawl .
Barring that, nothing pains me ...

And they're marching, marching, marching. . . . Ever new armed hordes! Powers, masses, rows upon rows, with wild shouts — enthusiastically — they flow into battle to murder each other!
And pursuing them, red with shame, with gaping wounds coloring the dirty snow, the Christ torn from the cross — Jesus, the Jewish man, the most human man, who became a Gentile God — — —

From out the orchestra sighs a sound, which rings at first like a still, choked down whining, as if endless sorrow had been stored up and would tremble forth mutely upon your lips, and would breathe out from you without a sound.
And like a sinner who tells his sin, his heart beating and his limbs a-tremble, the music now plaintively speaks and the tune now is wafted more melancholy and fatigued and cries silently, repentantly now like a child.