The Great Goddess (Die Grosse Gottin)
She mends things, mends things,
bent above her smashed darning-egg,
one end of the thread between her lips.
She mends day and night.
No end of new ladders, new holes.
At times she nods off,
for a moment only,
a century.
With a start she wakes up
and mends things, mends things.
How small she’s become,
small, blind and lined!
She feels for the holes
in the world with her thimble
and mends things, mends things.
MPT 16 – German and French Poetry – included translations by Michael Hamburger of poems by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and a review article on Enzensberger and his translators by Richard Dove, who has sent us the following postscript:
Several months after the review had been completed, Enzensberger once again took his readers by surprise, publishing a 78-poem collection whose subtitle strikes a calculatedly jarring note in the Age of Anything Goes: Leichter als Luft. Moralische Gedichte (Lighter than Air. Moral Poems; Suhrkamp, 1999). It is to be hoped that Michael Hamburger will provide us with a complete English equivalent – ghasels and all. As an appetizer, and as a belated birthday greeting to Enzensberger, a stopgap version of the last poem in the book follows.
Several months after the review had been completed, Enzensberger once again took his readers by surprise, publishing a 78-poem collection whose subtitle strikes a calculatedly jarring note in the Age of Anything Goes: Leichter als Luft. Moralische Gedichte (Lighter than Air. Moral Poems; Suhrkamp, 1999). It is to be hoped that Michael Hamburger will provide us with a complete English equivalent – ghasels and all. As an appetizer, and as a belated birthday greeting to Enzensberger, a stopgap version of the last poem in the book follows.
Translated by Richard Dove
Page(s) 49
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