VLADIMIR HOLAN THE WALL Why is your flight so heavy, Why so stalled? - While I have passed these fifteen years Talking to a wall, And from the depths of hell carry these remains, that when standing on my threshold life reveals to me its pain... 21. 6. 1963 THE END? At this time, she allows herself everything, She is bold and always threatens us as if The final heathen god had died... And what of eternity: so filled with hope, and worshipped like the final hour before the coming of the christ. But she still refuses what she wants... FIXED Not that living wasn't what I wanted, yet life, already so apocryphal, gave me the right to search for it in the great enigma death... But in doing that... HOW? How to live? How to be simple and literal? I was always searching for that word, spoken only once, but must confess, to having never found it, yet I should have searched for simple words... Even unconsecrated wine cannot be mixed with something better. ON THE ADVANCE Nothing frees the poet, - no, not even death. There's always some extension to his soul - his being that's not locked away - that's touched by all his other lives; none of which is perfect as if they were in paradise - in truth, they are in hell... THE PINE How beautiful the old pine is There upon the hill of your childhood memories which you visited again today... beneath it's murmur you reflect upon the dead, and wonder if you might be the next. Beneath its murmur, it's as if you have finished your last book and in silence must begin to weep a silent tear...so that these words of yours can grow... And what about your life? You sacrificed the familiar for the unfamiliar... And fate? Well, only once it laughed with you, and that was when your back was turned... OCTOBER The air's so crystal clear There's nothing like it here... And even doubles must refuse to speak: alive's the muse... and what cannot be seen has such an ugly spleen we simply close our eyes... good wine, good art, we prize. ONLY ONE... A small path in the mountains where all the clouds become fountains of divine inspiration - and shed their light upon it but only for a while - You feel at first, from here a sentimental smile chooses to address this bitter loneliness. Stay! ... be quite now, and think about it afterwards, that you have hardly more than this worn path: for life a stone, for death, a fortress. SMILING There are so many ways of smiling. But I'm thinking of the hardest, the simplest way to smile. It's a smile that is tormented, cut by the vigor's blade of time, A smile that wants for one more wrinkle, to solve the riddle, and be ready for God's great name. Such a smile is fixed upon the face - It stays much longer than from what they say it sprung - anticipating and presaging it, to see itself completely in the present abandoning the face... A YOUNG GIRL A young girl asks you: what is poetry? You wanted to say: Also that which you are, now you're here, that someone like you could even exist; and that I frightened and astonished, am jealous of the proof of this clear miracle, and of the fullness and the beauty of your body; and that I cannot even kiss you, nor sleep with you; and that I have nothing, save that he who's got nothing has nothing else but song... But you did not say it; you kept silent, And she for whom the song was meant couldn't hear... IT IS NOT It is not unimportant, where we are... Some stars come dangerously close to one another... Yet down here it's the violent separation of lovers only because time accelerates at the beat of it's own heart... Only simple folk do not believe in luck... OUT OF THE DARKNESS The maiden's hand lay resting on her modesty, a light uncertainty as if astonished secretly he was remembering that earth created earth. It's only that there are so many dead already, that perhaps the earth is still nothing else than earth, But earth that is a different earth... WHEN LOVE WITHDRAWS... When love withdraws itself from me It's never really gone! For instance, like the waterfall from which the same amount of water flows forever, always stays the same... FOR A LONG TIME... For a long time god locked away the laughter and the songs beyond our reach throughout eternity - We only touch upon those times, a disappearing spark that sets a flame inside us that never seems to grow. It's almost more than any person can endure For such time...the remnants...in his heart... CONSIDER Consider this fine old furniture, So soothing, smooth and pure, That somehow when compared to the iron bed all folded in the corner - it's somehow safe from tampering! A hundred years ago it was finished, and now it wobbles, rusted, insecure, but with tales of untold love... In desperation it wants to review eternity which somehow doesn't want a part of what has been the past. IN THE LAST TRAINS Oh my tears, where do you store your heaviness when you see no more tears are falling from my eyes? Where do you fall when no one cares? Are you one of those who cry without a person knowing why? You who must restore life to what it was before? HOUSES Houses with footsteps of the murdered have the most steps on the stairs. Houses with lame arms have no banisters. Houses of the blind have the most light. Houses filled with broken hearts are built of cement. Houses of death have a bar in the basement. All poems Translated By Klaus J. Gerken