[Dichtung]

Ingeborg Bachmann
Gedichte 1963-1964
Strangers in The Night


Ingeborg Bachmann
The Collected Poems
Poems 1963-1964
Strangers in The Night
In November, and again in December
I have to laugh, that was
quite a life for me.
The telephone has gone
quite pale, it rings in another way,
cigarettes have burned
my fingers,
and after that th cry
of the birds flying south.
We have spoken long distance,
and Jerusalem is always what
I thought of, which was mine.

How horrible
to scratch at my skin,
it is no longer possible
to hurt me deeply.
I talk and laugh and talk.
I can no longer be hurt deeply.

But the birds with their
terrible cries.
I let go of
a feeling, and that
was the last.

How tired I am and how I laugh,
and I drag myself to where the birds
have cried out, and I say nothing,
there is nothing more to say, nothing more.

Only in November, and also in December,
I have written your name
in the snow and rejoiced.
It was the loveliest time.
It wasn't just thanks to me,
the early winter was also
lucky for me, for
us both, perhaps.
Where are you? That's not a question.
I already know. I am old
and wise, the grave is shoveled,
nothing will be spared.
Youth, that eternal light,
I never saw it,
but I plead for you.
A couple of weeks of youth have been
granted me, and I have known I
had no part in it.
I want to be young, because I never was.
I only arrived after catastrophes,
and am patient.

transl. by Peter Filkins