Grete Tartler

Da Capo Al Fine

Nightfall, and the books turn into kites.

You light up the room with a comb while

a tulip scatters dark consonants.

And you worry

because in the empty glass earth, water, and fire are clashing,

because the trees have all been inventoried

and the earth is cracking open so you can see

beyond it, yes, “The supreme vice is not

to know the Divine. . . . “  If I yelled

“SLEEP WELL!” could you hear me

amidst the buzzing of the kites?

There is a noise growing loud,

neither the horn of the moon can be heard, nor the arch of the eyebrows

stretched taut, there is a noise growing loud

which the music teacher takes for

the TV next door, the trams in the underpass.

Oh, Supreme Engraver, are you still burnishing a sapphire

even though in the apartment lobby it is written: 

PRACTICING INSTRUMENTS PERMITTED ONLY DURING THE HOURS

                                    FOR BEATING CARPETS?

The glass is full now, you cannot hear the fall

of the final drop . . . There is a noise growing loud,

a light growing.

                                                                                                (Da Capo al Fine):

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Liliana Ursu

The Collector

He ignores the wind, the dust, the harmful radiation, for it’s the season

of the Sappho butterfly (where do I know that name from?

the entomologist’s wife asks herself).

The collector sets out for the fields, armed

with nets, with guide books—

it must be happiness chasing the blue wings,

forgetting the black ones.

One friend of ours, a conductor, is a passionate fisherman,

another has an extraordinary stamp collection;

you see, they have escaped the jaws

of ideas, they are joyful to be here on the earth.

“Ah, let us lead our lives this way, differently.”

The teacher of harmony wanders in, we talk about

Challenger, about Eliade’s death:

“He had his ashes thrown to the winds, like a Hindu.”

“See how much it counts, the culture we acquire as a child.”

Outside, the pupils we have polished are laughing during their break,

while marble dust sifts in the windows.

No, it must be the fluff from poplars,

or it’s butterflies,

or maybe ashes

looking for

the Collector.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Liliana Ursu

The Old Agora

Here Socrates held forth.

If you speak here, you might be heard,

for this is the place for speeches.

A boy shouts into his little Nokia; he’s upset,

Quarreling with somebody far away.

Fig seeds whisper under our

Footsteps – we stop, listen, stirb und werde.

Come, it’s autumn, the grass is making fun of us,

Toothless and green.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Liliana Ursu

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats described a Grecian urn never found.

No museum, no temple ruins held such an amphora,

Neither in the fields of Thessaly nor in Arcadia – nor in Delphi

have I found the truth he described – and I also believed:

beauty is truth “and that is all ye need…”

But here, on Greek soil, I myself could give this game

a try – I lean over the clay, smiling

as I recall the old joke about a doctor’s free advice, use “aerosols

of incense and then packing it under clay” – and I start my search anew.

Oh, poetry, after years and years:  you go on searching –

but forget what you’ve already found.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Liliana Ursu