Three Poems
Jens August Schade
My Young Beloved
My young beloved left me alone we don't remember
how
like a ship that slipped away into a blue horizon
like a dying tone she vanished
and the sleep came to me and the earth got distant
as a singing ball of silver
but you have shown yourself in a dream to me
your voice was cooling rain
your mouth was a ripe and edible fruit
created for a starving man
I remember you sad and consoling as a song of
birds and trees
they exist such women who love a man
as they eat a beloved meal . . .
Woman
Of gold and fire is my thought's feast —
why is there dread in your heart?
flowers grow behind your breasts
you smell of apples and eternity
The Goddess Yearns
Stars of silver and gold,
seductive apples,
you lay in my lap —
but give me once a great, passionate heart,
that can go up in flames between my hands
and complain and whimper and sigh and laugh.
See my lips breathe and speak and thirst.
Let a soldier come to me
— with gruesome pleasure I will work open his heart.
My young beloved left me alone we don't remember
how
like a ship that slipped away into a blue horizon
like a dying tone she vanished
and the sleep came to me and the earth got distant
as a singing ball of silver
but you have shown yourself in a dream to me
your voice was cooling rain
your mouth was a ripe and edible fruit
created for a starving man
I remember you sad and consoling as a song of
birds and trees
they exist such women who love a man
as they eat a beloved meal . . .
Woman
Of gold and fire is my thought's feast —
why is there dread in your heart?
flowers grow behind your breasts
you smell of apples and eternity
The Goddess Yearns
Stars of silver and gold,
seductive apples,
you lay in my lap —
but give me once a great, passionate heart,
that can go up in flames between my hands
and complain and whimper and sigh and laugh.
See my lips breathe and speak and thirst.
Let a soldier come to me
— with gruesome pleasure I will work open his heart.
translated from the Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy