above the arena. The charred
apostles on the roofs stand there in dismay.
X
After no more than a second, it was as though
she’d been gone for hours.
—PROUST, SWANN’S WAY
City in the blizzard beyond your misted glasses—
your first visit home, you lost them and didn’t miss them.
You’d have to go to Christmas carols
to find silence as thick as that outside the station.
A pair of red ears and a pale face in the snow, and that was you.
At liberty, thanks to an army exeat.
The uniform restricted you to small jumps for joy.
But for a kangaroo you showed a lot of patience, out in the deep freeze.
No one was there to meet you. In your own city,
you were a stranger at last. The life behind net curtains,
the burlesque that carried on till the last one said, that’s it, I’ve had it…,
from your standing seat, it looked like a big panto.
Never again would you have prayed so fervently
for the beauty in the streetcar, used to orders, to flash
you a smile. Anyway, as you soon saw, family
life went on without the prodigal—what was he now?
XI
Im Ernst, Max—no kidding now—you can dream
of a city like that till you’re blue in the face.
You can watch the colors dissolve, without even crying.
Above the slashed brocade,
even the sky is infantile, and pouts.
But what’s the use, they’ve stopped weaving tapestries
in the new waterproof marquees.
Only the old black and yellow favors continue to
poke through the material, as though nothing had happened.
If there’s a zeppelin hanging aloft,
should the sight of the Elbe make you melancholy?
No one, in a hundred years, would go that far.
FROM
ERHLÄRTE NACHT
(2002)
BERLIN POSTHUM
›Du kannst ja nach Berlin fahren. Da bist du schon einmal gewesen.‹
KIERKEGAARD, DIE WIEDERHOLUNG
Dezembermorgen. Im Taxi, an Friedhofsmauern vorüberfahrend,
Überrascht dich dein Neid. ›Die haben’s geschafft.‹
In den Augen, vom Licht aufgestemmt, reibt es wie nasser Sand.
Der Fahrer nestelt am Rosenkranz. Du siehst nur die Bahren
In den Schaufenstern, Trödel, hinter gelben Gardinen, gerafft.
Dann beginnst du zu zählen. Die Finger an jeder Hand
Reichen nicht aus — so viele Bestattungsfirmen gibt es entlang
Der Strecke von der Haustür zum Bahnhof. Schamlos ihr Werben,
Schwarz auf weiß, um die Toten von morgen, in harten Sätzen.
Alles ist rechtwinklig hier. Kreuze und Gitter brechen den Drang,
Als Samurai, ein Schwert in der Magengrube, zu sterben.
Die Bäcker haben den Brotteig verrührt. Die Metzger wetzen
Die Klingen vor Arbeitsbeginn. Obst glänzt in Stiegen, sortiert.
Das Taxameter, in Zwanzigerschritten, springt mit dem Geld um,
Das sich unendlich langsam verdient, mit elegischen Zeilen.
Fröstelnd das Hirn, exklusiv vom Zynismus der Zeit penetriert,
Reagiert mit Schläfrigkeit. Der Fahrgast erwidert stumm
Im Rückspiegel den Blick des Chauffeurs. Er muß sich beeilen,
Wenn er den Zug nicht verpassen will. Im Autoradio raunt
Eine sachliche Stimme die Weltnachrichten um sechs Uhr drei.
Irgendwo steigt jetzt ein Börsencoup, irgendwo platzt ein Scheck.
›Schon mal vorausgedacht?‹ pöbelt in Fettschrift ein Sarg Discount.
Am Straßenrand blitzt ein Leben auf, einzeln und — schon vorbei.
›Lange trauern hat keinen Zweck. Wir schaffen die Leiche weg.‹
BERLIN POSTHUMOUS
You can always go to Berlin. Remember, you’ve been there before.
KIERKEGAARD, REPETITION
December morning. Driving past the cemetery walls in the taxi,
You feel a strange pang of envy. “Their worries are over.”
In your eyes, forced apart by light, you have a sensation as of wet sand.
The driver is fingering his worry-beads. You see nothing but biers
In the windows, junk, behind yellow drawn curtains.
And then you begin counting. The fingers of both hands
Are not enough for all the undertakers on the stretch
Between your front door and the station, all hustling shamelessly
For the dead of tomorrow. A cutthroat business, evidently.
Everything here is right angles. Crosses and latticework cure you
Of your yen to die as a samurai with a sword in your guts.
The bakers have kneaded their dough. Different fruit gleams in flats.
The butchers are whetting their blades before getting to work.
The taximeter skips ahead twenty cents at a time—money it takes
Forever to earn if what you do for a living is turn hexameters.
A delicate shiver in your brain, the effect of so much cynicism
Taken on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning.
Silently you catch the eye of the driver in the rearview mirror.
He will have to step on it if you’re not to miss your train.
6:03, a low voice gabbles financial news on the car radio.
A raiding party on some stock exchange, someone else’s credit rating dives.
“Ever considered the future?” the bold print mugs you in Coffins for all the Family.
On the pavement edge, a life flashes by—a blur and gone.
“What’s the sense in endless moping. Just leave us to do the coping.”
ARKADIEN FÜR ALLE
Nicht nur das Zentrum, menschenleer am Sonntagvormittag,
Die Briefe, gestempelt mit dem Vermerk Empfänger unbekannt,
Das Meeresrauschen im Telephonhörer, in die Stille das ›Bitte?‹
Die tausenden Autos, von den Besitzern verlassen am Straßenrand,
Auch die Reklametafeln mit den Dichterplagiaten, die keiner liest,
In den Parks, grell beschmiert, die Monumente der Schulbuchidole,
Dies alles und manches, wovor man die Augen gern schließt,
Nährt den Verdacht. So also sieht, aufgeschwollen zur Metropole,
Der Ort aus, an dem man den Gott einst begrub wie einen Hund.
Arkadien, Friedhof der Himmlischen, ihm gleicht jede Stadt,
Wo der Tod ein- und ausgeht, das Leben auf privatisiertem Grund.
Von wegen Idylle, Landschaft der Seligen, bukolisches Reservat.
Was immer Hirten besangen, wovon die Reisenden träumten —
Dies ist der Schauplatz. City und gorod, metropolis oder ville.
Hier geht man, sein eigener Geist, unter stoischen Bäumen,
Ein gläserner Mensch, schlaflos, sich spiegelnd im Vielzuviel.
Den Takt geben Blicke, urbane Reflexe, nicht die Eklogen,
In denen Daphnis flirtete, Milon und Lakon einander beschützten.
Man spürt sein Skelett, Vertebrat im Vibrato der Brückenbogen,
Verliert das Gesicht, geblendet vom metallischen Glanz der Pfützen,
Und ist doch nirgends so heimisch. Erst hier, im gewohnten Exil,
Wo man nachs in sein Mauseloch kroch, gab es Krümel von Glück.
Wann sonst, wenn nicht im dichten Verkehr, unterwegs ohne Ziel,
War man je so vital, so dem faulen posthumen Frieden entrückt?
ARCADIA FOR ALL
It’s not just the city center, deserted on Sunday morning,
The letters, branded with the stamp not known at this address,
The sea-surge in the phone, and the irked yell of “Pardon?”
The thousand
s of cars abandoned at the roadside by their owners;
It’s also the advertising hoardings with the poetic borrowings that no one reads,
The defaced monuments to boyhood heroes in the parks,
All this and much more, from which you prefer to avert your gaze—
Well, it gives you pause. This, then, swollen to metropolitan dimensions,
Is what it looks like, the place where they buried god like a dog.
Arcadia, celestial cemetery, a model for every city
Where death comes and goes, and life stutters on privatized astroturf.
Forget your idylls, your landscape of the blest, your bucolic reservations.
Whatever the shepherds sang, or travelers dreamed—
This here’s the place for you. City and gorod, metropolis or ville.
Here you promenade your own soul, beneath stoical trees,
A glass man, insomniac, reflected in so much excess.
The tempo’s set by glances, flashing eye-contacts, not eclogues
Of flirtatious Daphne, Milon and Lakon closer than a pair of brothers.
You can feel the buzz in your bones, your spine in the judder of the arcades,
Lose your face, dazzled from the metallic upgleam of the puddles,
But where else is home? It was only ever here, in this familiar exile
When you crept into your rathole at night, that you tasted a few crumbs of joy.
When else, if not in the human flock, maundering without purpose,
Did you feel so alive, so cut adrift from the moldering posthumous peace?
NOTES
“PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG BORDER DOG (NOT COLLIE)”
“Like a dog”: The last words of Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial: “Like a dog! he said, it was as though the shame would outlive him.”
“Nothing”: Comment from a border-patrol officer who served on the Berlin Wall for thirty years.
“half enfant perdu”: Character from Heinrich Heine’s eponymous poem about a doomed sentry on the front lines.
See “i due occhi della storia” allegory from Scienza Nuova, the principal work of the philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744).
“THE MISANTHROPE ON CAPRI”
Refers to the emperor Tiberius (42 BC–37 AD). From his villa on Capri, which today is inhabited by lizards, he ruled an empire that stretched from the British Isles to the deserts of Africa. One gesture of his bony hand, as Tacitus wrote, was enough to unleash the Roman Sixth Fleet.
“(OF INNER UNREST)”
There is a pun—untranslatable as puns generally are—on “Unruh,” which in German means both “unrest” and the mainspring of a watch. (M.H.)
“BERLIN ROUNDS”
Tauentzienstrasse), “a broken bottleneck”: A reference to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächt-niskirche Memorial Church on Kurfürstendamm street, in its guise as a preserved ruin.
Anhalter Bahnhof), “The Mongol hordes”: Refers to the Nazi propaganda technique designed to terrify and to mobilize the populace against the Red Army.
Epilogue), “Goya’s colossus”: A reference to Francisco Goya’s painting “The Colossus” in the Prado in Madrid.
“IN FRONT OF AN OLD X-RAY”
“the House of Charred Furniture”: The so-called “Casa del mobilio carbonizzato” in Herculaneum.
“VITA BREVIS”
“History was no use to me”: See Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.
“EUROPE AFTER THE LAST RAINS”
“The fantasy mosque”: The premises of the former cigarette factory Yenize, near the Elbe river.
“the big garden”: The Dresden Municipal Park.
“Hiroshima”: According to secret plans, Dresden was among the original targets for the dropping of an atom bomb.
“BERLIN POSTHUMOUS”
“endless moping”: Advertising slogan of a Berlin funeral director in the 1920s.
DURS GRÜNBEIN
ASHES FOR BREAHFAST
DURS GRÜNBEIN is the author of eight previous volumes of poetry, as well as essays and translations from the Greek and Latin. His work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won at age thirty-three, and the 2004 Friedrich-Nietzsche-Preis. He has lived in Berlin since 1985.
MICHAEL HOFMANN lives in London and teaches part-time at the University of Florida. He has translated many German-language authors, among them Ernst Jünger, Franz Kafka, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Joseph Roth.
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 2005 by Durs Grünbein
Translation and preface copyright © 2005 by Michael Hofmann
All rights reserved
Published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First paperback edition, 2006
Grauzone morgens (1988), Schädelbasislektion (1991), Falten und Fallen (1994), Nach den Satiren (1999), and Erklärte Nacht (2002) were originally published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany.
Some of these poems previously appeared, in slightly different form, in Grand Street, The Literary Review, London Review of Books, The New Republic, and The Times Literary Supplement.
Excerpts from “May 24, 1980” and “San Pietro” from Collected Poems in English by Joseph Brodsky. Copyright © 2000 by the Estate of Joseph Brodsky. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-374-53013-6
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-374-53013-0
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eISBN 9781466886131
First eBook edition: October 2014
Ashes for Breakfast Page 15
