Three Poems

Franz Werfel

1917

November Canto

This is November

Season of mills.

Wind of the black early morning services.

Cemetery

And thousandnightliness

Of the childish little candles,

And their fear.

Trudging now

Through the mud in the street.

O, how we breathe,

We poor animals!

But there is a blush already

On the grate of our stove,

While outside the free folk of the ravens,

Skeptical and scornful,

Travels above the death of the Godtrees,

Across soil and shivering bog.

Now November says:

This is your world!

And snorts into the vapor

Of the heavily breathing horse.

And snorts into the fumes

Of the tormented earth.

Now we are wearing

A mysterious wreath of straw

Adornments of thistles.

Now we are forgetting you,

Friends, dear friends,

As our breath goes on pilgrimage

Through the panting Acheron.

Fog between mountains and forests,

Fog

Between our heads, friends.

Forgotten our gaze

And that we touched each other,

And laughed at the soothsayers

And danced under the lights of chandeliers,

And careened downward

In our evening splendor during the triumphal ride.

Lost the lie of our lust.

Since we had to lie, after all!

The day sharpens.

The night is austere.

Poor we are and without bread.

No one fetches water for us from the well.

In our inner city

The hospital grows already.

And the lunatics

Bicker high-pitched in the screeching garden.

The god of the old river

Gnaws on the suicide

While all cathedrals are droning,

Fight the battle Catalaunian style.

But the demons,

Our inescapable

Guardian angels, guardian devils,

Roll dice above our houses,

Scuffle in the smoke.

But quietly, outside our windows,

The disconsolate horn descends,

Hornloyalty of the good guardian.

Nightly, a weak flight.

But this must be impressed upon us

Upon you, who have forgotten me,

And upon me, who has forgotten you!

Avenged are all sins

Timely and just.

This, friends, a great consolation.

Because here is a meaning.

Loss

To lose you again

Whom I’ve already lost many times at midnight!

To lose you again

Whom I let go many times in the early five-o’clock light.

I loved you,

Therefore you died hourly for me.

I am familiar with the terror of being terrified,

Familiar with my swaying in dreams.

You are still shining along the road,

But I already saw you sinking down to one side.

You are still shoring up summer with your summer,

But I already sat at your place.

You are still laughing about the stairs,

But I already filled up the lamp.

You are still here; you are not gone yet,

you are still breathing what is lovingly shared,

But I have often lost you on severe mornings,

I know the state of being a widower.

You are still present in me as sound.

But I am already pouring out the vessel over your grass.

Ballad of a Guilt

At the edge of the October woods.

The morning, sleep growing old,

Wasted, arrived with groans.

Nocturnal animals vanished, one, two.

Woodpecker was not here yet.

White, the street swung by.

I swung by with the street.

Tree touched me like an ancestor,

A wilting Abraham

With leaves sang wisely: Let it be!

Heavy lead hung in my back.

I was led by a spell without taking steps.

Then a scream came from the forest.

And twice and thrice a scream.

I do not know who died.

It was the scream of a child,

It pierced me and tore me apart.

The screaming of men was heard,

The screaming of women,

In the way rabble, felled by a Prince on his horse,

Screams; such was the screaming.

And yet only in the way a child screams

That is being strangled to death.

May God forgive me!

I was carried along by the street.

I did not run, I did not help.

Quickly the winds extinguished it.

I said: You are only dreaming in passing,

Passing by on this street.

It was only a fright, not a scream.

And day has arrived, one, two,

The veils are already being dragged along.

The fields are filled with light snow,

Twilight snows lightly without scream.

The white fields roam into view.

I said: You will wake yourself and be free,

wake yourself into the day and freshness already free.

Patriarchs threatened me subtly

Shaking their foliage and I drifted

From the hearth into the day and into the pace

From the village and the hermitage,

From the spell of the woods into the day and the pace.

Translated by

Susanne

Klingenstein

Credits

Franz Werfel, “Vier Gedichte” [Four Poems], Das Jüdische Prag: Eine Sammelschrift (Prague: Verlag der Selbstwehr, 1917), pp. 20–21.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

Three Poems

November Canto

Loss

Ballad of a Guilt

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Franz Werfel

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