("No hour can darker be...")

TWO POEMS

Dunkler kann es nicht werden

als diese Stunde, die sinkt,

mit allen Lasten der Erden

in fremder Nacht ertrinkt . . .

Gottfried Benn

I

No hour can darker be

than this, with you away:

a dim and dismal fog

makes deepest night of day.

The brain's numb groping hands

can feel no joy, no pain;

all feeling frozen stands,

turned to the past again.

For I-not mine the fault-

have lagged, and backward gaze.

My tears have made me salt,

these stiff and bitter days!

Dead senses are my arms:

as in some ancient myth,

seek now to break these charms,

a stone to battle with.

[ 194 ]

Edouard Roditi

Yet I must have some heel,

deep-hidden, still unarmed,

where I your wound might feel,

and die, as if uncharmed.

u

For Erich Alport

"Tas d'oeufs frits dans de vieux chapeaux!"

Arthur Rimbaud: "Fleurs."

Elder and hemlock bathe

the brow in oblivion,

primrose and cowslip now

are memories of spring's

thin innocence replaced

by headier dandelions.

These

an acrid smell of flies

pursues till they persuade

a sickly yellow sleep

buzzing with black,

like eyes

shut to the sun, yet full

of sun's black dancing wounds.