Ingeborg Bachmann
Gedichte 1964-1967
Wahrlich
für Anna Achmatova

Ingeborg Bachmann
The Collected Poems
Poems 1964-1967
Truly
for Anna Akhmatova*
To one who's never been stunned by a word,
and I say it to you all,
who only knows how to help himself
and only with words —

he cannot be helped.
Not over the short term
and not over the long.

To create a single lasting sentence,
to persevere in the ding-dong of words.

No one writes this sentence
who does not sign her name.

transl. by Peter Filkins

* Bachmann met Akhmatova in Rome in late 1964 and published this poem in 1965. In 1967, Bachmann left her publisher, R. Piper Verlag, in protest against their publication of Akhmatova's selected poems in a translation done by Hans Baumann, a poet embraced by the Nazis. After publishing "Malina" with Suhrkamp Verlag, she later returned to Piper.