FOR THE TREE'S SAKE(1935)


You Are The Seed

You are the seed and I your mould.

You lie inside me and grow.

You are the child which is awaited.

I am your mother.

 

Earth, give your warmth!

Blood, give your essence!

An unknown force today needs

all of life I have had.

 

The streaming warm wave

knows no dust,

further it wants to create,

and break forth.

 

That is why there is living pain

inside me now:

something is growing and tearing me -

dearest, you!.


Of Course It Hurts

Of course it hurts when buds burst.

Otherwise why would spring hesitate?

Why would all our fervent longing

be bound in the frozen bitter haze?

The bud was the casing all winter.

What is this new thing, which consumes and bursts?

Of course it hurts when buds burst,

pain for that which grows

and for that which envelops.

 

Of course it is hard when drops fall.

Trembling with fear they hang heavy,

clammer on the branch, swell and slide -

the weight pulls them down, how they cling.

Hard to be uncertain, afraid and divided,

hard to feel the deep pulling and calling,

yet sit there and just quiver -

hard to want to stay

and to want to fall.

 

Then, at the point of agony and when all is beyond

help,

the tree's buds burst as if in jubilation,

then, when fear no longer exists,

the branch's drops tumble in a shimmer,

forgetting that they were afraid of the new,

forgetting that they were fearful of the journey -

feeling for a second their greatest security,

resting in the trust

that creates the world.

 


Farewell

I would have woken you to a nakedness like a naked

spring evening,

when the stars overflow

and the Earth burns beneath melting snow.

I would have seen you just once

sink into the darkness of creative chaos,

would have seen your eyes like a wide-opened space,

ready to be filled,

would have seen your hands like blossoming flowers,

empty, new, awaiting.

 

You leave, and nothing of this have I given you.

I never reached, where your soul lies bare.

You go, and you take nothing of me with you -

leaving me to my defeat.

 

I remember another farewell:

we were hurled from the crucible as one being,

and when we were parted, we no longer knew

what was I or you ...

But you - like a bowl of glass you have left my hand,

so complete as only a dead thing and so unchangeable,

with no memories other than light fingermarks

which are washed away in water.

 

I would have woken you to a formlessness like a

formless flickering flame,

which at last finds its living shape, its own ...

Defeat, oh defeat!


My Skin Is Full Of Butterflies

My skin is full of butterflies, of fluttering wings -

they flit out over the meadow and delight in their honey

and flit home and die in small sad spasms,

and not one grain of pollen is disturbed by light feet.

For them the sun is hot, immeasurable, older than time

itself ...

 

But under skin and blood and inside marrow

captured sea-eagles move heavily heavily,

spread-winged, never releasing their prey.

 

How confused would they be, once, in the sea's spring

storm?

How would they cry, when the sun fired white-hot its

yellow eyes?

Closed is the cave! Closed is the cave!

And between the claws writhe white like young roots

my innermost fibres.


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