Self Portrait
I now see a head, huge and strange
There in the mirror, and a leaden gaze
Passing through me into the unknown . . .
And someone says: But that’s you.
I know it’s me. But does that mean
The features are less hidden, less distant,
The lines clearer and more familiar?
Dusk rains down over everything
About the eye sockets, mouth and chin,
No day is reflected – oh everywhere
Is dusk, into which the first star
Has not yet sent its light, for godless
Is my earth, dumb and wavering
And this face is a pond, grey and still
And far from the last houses;
Few pass by it, and if they do
Then often the image is not reflected.
For what it holds, falls in on itself, falling
And falling in its depth, where perhaps
The soul blossoms gently in its dreams
And waits
Yet the pond remains unsure.
Will Stone, born in 1966, is a poet and translator living in Suffolk. He studied for an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia. His translation of ‘El Desdichado’, the opening sonnet of Nerval’s Les Chimères, appeared in MPT 11, and the whole sequence was published by The Menard Press in 1999. His translations of Trakl appeared in MPT 16. He has published several pamphlets of poetry and an essay concerning the fall and rise of songwriter/poet Nick Drake. Shadow Symposium, his latest collection of poems, is forthcoming from Ambros Press.
Anthony Vivis became a freelance writer in 1983 after working for the RSC and the BBC. Sixty of his translations have been performed, including plays by Büchner, Fassbinder, Goethe and Hauptmann, and he has published translations from Ausländer (with Jean Boase-Beier) and Kirsch (with Wendy Mulford).
Translated by William StoneAnthony Vivis
Page(s) 50-51
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