Christian Morgenstern
from Galgenlieder (1905)
The Pike
A pike and all his family,
Converted by Saint Anthony,
Chose to do the good saint’s wishes
And stick to vegetarian dishes.Of these, there are a goodly number,
Sea-fern, sea-pear and sea-cucumber . . .
The trouble is, such foods all tend
To come straight out the other end.This made the pond quite putrified,
And soon five hundred fish had died.
The saint was summoned. Quite unfazed
He thrice intoned: “May God be praised!”
Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914), the son of a Munich painter, was a wholly original humorist, for whom the term Sprachhumor (verbal humour) might have been invented. He was a serious philosophical thinker whose humour plays on the gap between word and object. Morgenstern translated Ibsen’s Brand and Peer Gynt, and his own ‘serious’ poems are metaphysical and largely melancholy. He died, like his mother, of consumption.
Translated by David Cram
Page(s) 34
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The