[B][SIZE=2][I]Ludwig Achim von Arnim[/I] [/SIZE][/B]

[B][SIZE=2]Mir ist zu licht zum Schlafen ...[/SIZE][/B]

Mir ist zu licht zum Schlafen,
Der Tag bricht in die Nacht,
Die Seele ruht im Hafen,
Ich bin so froh erwacht.

Ich hauchte meine Seele
Im ersten Kusse aus,
Was ist's, daß ich mich quäle
Ob sie auch fand ein Haus.


Sie hat es wohl gefunden
Auf ihren Lippen schön,
O welche sel'ge Stunden,
Wie ist mir so geschehn!


Was soll ich nun noch sehen?
Ach, alles ist in ihr.
Was fühlen, was erflehen?
Es ward ja alles mir.


Ich habe was zu sinnen,
Ich hab', was mich beglückt:
In allen meinen Sinnen
Bin ich von ihr entzückt.

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]Everything[/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by Anna Akhmatova[/I][/U]

Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we were children.[/CENTER]

[B][SIZE=2] Lied [/SIZE][/B]

[B][I][SIZE=2] Gottfried August Bürger[/SIZE][/I][/B]

Du mit dem Frühlingsangesichte,
Du schönes, blondes Himmelskind,
An deiner Anmut Rosenlichte
Sieht sich mein Auge noch halb blind!

Nach etwas durst ich lang im stillen,
Nach einem Labekuß von dir,
Den gib mir nur mit gutem Willen,
Sonst nehm ich rasch ihn selber mir!


Und sollte dich der Raub verdrießen,
So geb ich gern den Augenblick,
Die Schuld des Frevels abzubüßen,
Ihn hundertfältig dir zurück.

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]Lying in me [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by Anna Akhmatova[/I][/U]

Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness, and it is pain.
Anyone looking straight into my eyes
Could not help seeing it, and could not fail
To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet
Than if he were listening to some tragic tale.

I know the gods changed people into things,
Leaving their consciousness alive and free.
To keep alive the wonder of suffering,
You have been metamorphosed into me.[/CENTER]

[B][SIZE=2] Matthias Claudius[/SIZE][/B]

[B][SIZE=2] Abendlied[/SIZE][/B]

Der Mond ist aufgegangen,
Die goldnen Sternlein prangen
Am Himmel hell und klar;
Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget,
und aus den Wiesen steiget
Der weisse Nebel wunderbar.

Wie ist die Welt so stille
Und in der Dämmrung Hülle
So traulich und so hold!
Als eine stille Kammer,
Wo ihr des Tages Jammer
Verschlafen und vergessen sollt.


Seht ihr den Mond dort stehen? -
Er ist nur halb zu sehen
Und ist doch rund und schön!
So sind wohl manche Sachen,
Die wir getrost belachen,
Weil unsre Augen sie nicht sehn.


Wir stolze Menschenkinder
Sind eitel arme Sünder
Und wissen gar nicht viel;
Wir spinnen Luftgespinste
Und suchen viele Künste
Und kommen weiter von dem Ziel.


Gott, laß uns dein Heil schauen,
Auf nichts Vergänglichs trauen,
Nicht Eitelkeit uns freun!
Laß uns einfältig werden
Und vor dir hier auf Erden
Wie Kinder fromm und fröhlich sein!


Wollst endlich sonder Grämen
Aus dieser Welt uns nehmen
Durch einen sanften Tod!
Und, wenn du uns genommen,
Laß uns in Himmel kommen,
Du unser Herr und unser Gott!


So legt euch denn, ihr Brüder,
In Gottes Namen nieder;
Kalt ist der Abendhauch.
Verschon uns, Gott! mit Strafen,
Und laß uns ruhig schlafen!
Und unsern kranken Nachbar auch!

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]Lullaby [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by W. H. Auden[/I][/U]

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.[/CENTER]

[B][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][SIZE=3][COLOR=red]Nu[/COLOR][COLOR=red]r für Dich[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][SIZE=3][B][COLOR=red]Oh die Königin meines Herzen,
und die Schönste aus dem Norden,
um einst mit Dir zu sein,
bin ich geboren worden.

Und um Dich zu bewundern,
und um Dich zu verehren,
um Dich zu vergöttern,
und Dich zu begehren.

Um für Dich alles zu geben,
und für Dich alles zu erwerben,
um für Dich zu leben,
und für Dich zu sterben. [/COLOR]
[/B][/SIZE][/FONT]

[B][I][SIZE=2]Matthias Claudius[/SIZE][/I][/B]

[B][SIZE=2] Der Mensch[/SIZE] [/B]

Empfangen und genähret
vom Weibe wunderbar,
kömmt er und sieht und höret
und nimmt des Trugs nicht wahr;
gelüstet und begehret
und bringt sein Tränlein dar;
verachtet und verehret;
hat Freude und Gefahr;
glaubt, zweifelt, wähnt und lehret,
hält nichts und alles wahr;
erbauet und zerstöret
und quält sich immerdar;
schläft, wachet, wächst und zehret;
trägt braun und graues Haar,
und alles dieses währet,
wenn's hoch kommt, achtzig Jahr.
Dann legt er sich zu seinen Vätern nieder,
und er kömmt nimmer wieder.

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]As I Walked Out One Evening [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by W. H. Auden
[/I][/U]
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.[/CENTER]

[B][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]<H3>[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][COLOR=red]Selbstlose Liebe[/COLOR][/FONT][/B]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][SIZE=3][B][COLOR=red]Wie der Nachtfalter um die Kerzen,
fliege ich um Dich herum,
ich liebe Dich von ganzem Herzen,
frag mich bitte nicht warum? [/COLOR][SIZE=4][COLOR=red]Heutenacht im Liebesfeuer,
werde sicher ich verbrannt,
der Preis ist mir nicht zu teuer,
auch die Folgen mir bekannt.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[/B][/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]</H3>

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]The Shield of Achilles [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by W. H. Auden[/I][/U]

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.[/CENTER]

[B][I][SIZE=2] Annette von Droste-Hülshoff[/SIZE][/I][/B]

[B][SIZE=2] Letzte Worte[/SIZE][/B]

Geliebte, wenn mein Geist geschieden,
So weint mir keine Träne nach;
Denn, wo ich weile, dort ist Frieden,
Dort leuchtet mir ein ew'ger Tag!

Wo aller Erdengram verschwunden,
Soll euer Bild mir nicht vergehn,
Und Linderung für eure Wunden,
Für euern Schmerz will ich erflehn.


Weht nächtlich seine Seraphsflügel
Der Friede übers Weltenreich,
So denkt nicht mehr an meinen Hügel,
Denn von den Sternen grüß' ich euch!

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]The More Loving One [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by W. H. Auden[/I][/U]

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.[/CENTER]

[B][SIZE=2] Child of the grass [/SIZE][/B]

[B][I][SIZE=2] Ezra Pound (1885-1972)[/SIZE][/I][/B]


Child of the grass
The years pass Above us
Shadows of air All these shall Love us
Winds for our fellows
The browns and the yellows
Of autumn our colors
Now at our life's morn. Be we well sworn
Ne'er to grow older
Our spirits be bolder At meeting
Than e'er before All the old lore
Of the forests & woodways
Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal
Ne'er shall we feel
Aught of sorrow [IMG]http://poetry.eserver.org/space.gif[/IMG]
Let light flow about thee
As a cloak of air

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]Freedom of Love [/SIZE][/B]
[U][I]by Andre Breton[/I][/U]
(Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire[/CENTER]