(or, German by the Aesthetic Method)
I believe
I do believe, I do believe
The country I like best of all is German.
I wander in a calm folk-colored daze: the infant
Looks down upon me from his mother’s arms
And says-oh, God knows what he says!
It’s baby-talk? he’s sick? or is it German?
That Nachtigallenchor: does it sing German?
Yoh, yoh: here mice, rats, tables, chairs,
Grossmütter, Kinder, the Herrgott im Himmel,
All, all but I
all, all but I
speak German.
Have you too sometimes, by the fire, at evening,
Believed that you are–whatever you once were?
It is ignorance alone that is enchanting:
Dearer to me than all the treasures of the earth
Is something living, said black Rumpelstiltskin
And hopped home; charcoal-burners heard him singing
And spoiled it all … And all because
If he only hadn’t known his namel
In German I don’t know my name.
I am the log
The fairies left one morning in my place.
In German I believe in them, in anything:
The world is everything that is the case.
How clever people are! I look on open-mouthed
As Kant reels down the road im Morgenrot
Humming Mir ist so bang, so bang, mein Schatz
All the nixies set their watches by him
Two hours fast…
I think, My calendar’s
Two centuries too fast, and give a sigh
Of trust. I reach out for the world and ask
The price; it answers, One touch of your finger.
In all my Germany there’s no Gesellschaft
But one between eine Katze and ein Maus.
What’s business? What’s a teaspoon? What’s a sidewalk?
Schweig stille, meine Seele! Such things are not for thee.
It is by Trust, and Love, and reading Rilke
Without ein Wörterbuch, that man learns German.
The Word rains in upon his blessed head
As glistening as from the hand of God
And means-what does it mean? Ah well, it’s German.
Glaube, mein Herz! A Feeling in the Dark
Brings worlds, brings words that hard-eyed Industry
And all the Schools’ dark Learning never knew.
And yet it’s hard sometimes, I won’t deny it.
Take for example my own favorite daemon,
Dear good great Goethe: ach, what German!
Very idiomatic, very noble-very like a sibyl.
My favorite style is Ochs von Lerchenau’s.
I’ve memorized his da und da und da und da
And whisper it when Life is dark and Death is dark.
(There was someone who knew how to speak
To us poor Kinder here im Fremde.)
And Heinel At the ninety-sixth mir traumte
I sigh as a poet, but dimple as ein Schuler.
And yet-if it’s easy is it German?
-And yet, that wunderschöne Lindenbaum
Im Mondenscheinel … What if it is in Schilda?
It’s moonlight, isn’t it? Mund, Mond, Herz, and Schmerz
Sing round my head, in Zeit and Ewigkeit,
And my heart lightens at each Sorge, each Angst:
I know them well. And Schicksal! Ach, you Norns,
As I read I hear your-what’s the word for scissors?
And Katzen have Tatzen-why can’t I call someone Kind?
What a speech for Poetry (especially Folk-)!
And yet when, in my dreams, eine schwartzbraune Hexe
(Who mows on the Neckar, reaps upon the Rhine)
Riffles my yellow ringlets through her fingers,
She only asks me questions: What is soap?
I don’t know. A suit-case I don’t know. A visit?
I laugh with joy, and try to say like Lehmann:
Quin-quin, es ist ein Besuch!
Ah, German!
Till the day I die I’ll be in love with German:
If only I don’t learn German … I can hear my broken
Voice murmuring to der Arzt: “Ich-sterber
He answers sympathetically: “Nein-sterbe.”
Meanwhile I sit here on the sofa reading Grimm.
Next year I start Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
O happiness! The record-player’s playing Mahler :
I lean back snugly, like a fly in amber.
I’m what I’ve wished to be: a perfect fool.
If God gave me the choice–but I stole this from Lessing
Of German and learning German, I’d say: Keep your
German!
The prospect of knowing German terrifies me.
You poor Germans: not ever to learn German!
… It’s this that’s at the bottom of my Method:
Surely this way no one could learn German,
I tell myself; and yet that isn’t sure
It’s difficult-it is impossible?
I’m hopeful that it is, but I can’t say
For certain; I don’t know enough German.
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