Remembrance
The autumn was warm.
Flying flocks rustled the vineyards.
We drank country beer from stone tankards
Evenings striding arm in arm.
I said: see there in the river
The swan has already swung morning over the treetops—
You chewed silently on golden hay stalks
I stood before a future kiss and quivered.
Early haze veiled us both
under the alder. The hills blurred
as our hair merged.
Downstream lamented the woodcock croak.
The world was over.
Passing Through
You said: Spend the night with me again
We’ve both been so scarce
I like being with you
And the north wind is blowing cold.
I asked: Do you have the key?
We climbed upstairs without light.
Table chair bed and the rusted key—
But I did not hesitate.
This—you said—was like a prison
Where I drifted senselessly
But I knew the yearning was stronger
that endured past the rage.
I have felt three suffocating winters
Come to pass here
Yet behind the barriers
I could see your laughter.
I sighed: What do you know
Of wandering lonely in the rainland? . . .
Only in remembering shared
With distant lip and hand . . .
We sat at the dirty table
Hour by hour
Until we forgot the year
Mouth to mouth.
In the morning we once again
Recognized the other’s eye and hair
Trembling we sank down
You whispered: same as ever—
Da Nun Der Regen Rinnt
As the rain runs down
I call out for you.
In the beaten towns
There are many like us.
No more words or greetings
Penetrate the encircling borders.
When the clock tower finally rings
I am empty and withered.
But one night
In the rising firmament:
Mars turns old and pale
Venus ascends and burns.
Wherever you are
Peer through the clouds of smoke
When you raise your head
You will see them as well.
Three Poems
Wolfgang Cordan
translated from the German by Klein Voorhees
Listen to the original read by the translator:
I am not the first, nor will I be the last translator to say the most difficult struggle I faced when working with these poems was whether or not to preserve their original rhyme schemes. This decision is often rooted in the aim to be as faithful to the original poem as possible—and that was a factor in my efforts—but in the case of Wolfgang Cordan, rhyme was not just an aesthetic or thematic technique, but a political one.
In 1871, the legislation known as Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual acts between men in Germany, and this law would stand for some time past Cordan’s death in 1966. The rhetorical choice to utilize a structure that conformed to poetic traditions, while undoubtedly a decision with artistic intention and reference, was a tactic used by many homosexual poets to gain acceptance or be viewed as respectable by heterosexual society, as well as to avoid attention from the law. This is not to dismiss queer expression in the twentieth century as a farce constructed for heterosexual comfort, but rather to underscore the efforts queer artists and publications had to make to survive while still expressing themselves.
In short: to preserve Cordan’s formal choices is to preserve the nuanced operation of queer existence in an era where the community was routinely silenced, if not erased entirely.
This need to preserve the rhyme scheme felt paramount in “Remembrance.” With its subjects of love, loss, humanity, and how these ideas flourish in nature, the poem is reminiscent of Romanticism, a movement respected for—among other things—its sophistication and emphasis on natural aesthetics. But even in this poem’s bucolic serenity, the speaker and their partner cannot escape the cruel reality lurking outside the scene: in the penultimate line, the “Schnepfe,” a type of bird, emits a “klagte,” a lamenting wail—in German, “Schnepfe” is also slang for a sex worker. At the time Cordan lived and wrote, it was not uncommon for straight men to pose as homosexuals to take home sex workers or johns and kill them. Here, a sex worker sounds the funerary cry, for themselves or a friend, and the world of the poem comes to an end.
Cordan masterfully utilized poetic tradition in his work as a vehicle for narratives excluded from the traditional canon: queerness, sex work, hate crimes. This allowed queerness to not only subvert the canon, but exist within it.
In 1871, the legislation known as Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual acts between men in Germany, and this law would stand for some time past Cordan’s death in 1966. The rhetorical choice to utilize a structure that conformed to poetic traditions, while undoubtedly a decision with artistic intention and reference, was a tactic used by many homosexual poets to gain acceptance or be viewed as respectable by heterosexual society, as well as to avoid attention from the law. This is not to dismiss queer expression in the twentieth century as a farce constructed for heterosexual comfort, but rather to underscore the efforts queer artists and publications had to make to survive while still expressing themselves.
In short: to preserve Cordan’s formal choices is to preserve the nuanced operation of queer existence in an era where the community was routinely silenced, if not erased entirely.
This need to preserve the rhyme scheme felt paramount in “Remembrance.” With its subjects of love, loss, humanity, and how these ideas flourish in nature, the poem is reminiscent of Romanticism, a movement respected for—among other things—its sophistication and emphasis on natural aesthetics. But even in this poem’s bucolic serenity, the speaker and their partner cannot escape the cruel reality lurking outside the scene: in the penultimate line, the “Schnepfe,” a type of bird, emits a “klagte,” a lamenting wail—in German, “Schnepfe” is also slang for a sex worker. At the time Cordan lived and wrote, it was not uncommon for straight men to pose as homosexuals to take home sex workers or johns and kill them. Here, a sex worker sounds the funerary cry, for themselves or a friend, and the world of the poem comes to an end.
Cordan masterfully utilized poetic tradition in his work as a vehicle for narratives excluded from the traditional canon: queerness, sex work, hate crimes. This allowed queerness to not only subvert the canon, but exist within it.
Wolfgang Cordan (1909–1966), born Heinrich Wolfgang Horn, was a German writer, translator, and cultural anthropologist whose research focused on Mesoamerican societies and languages, although the veracity of his studies has been debated over the years. In 1933, following the rise of the Nazi regime, Cordan fled to France and then the Netherlands, where he joined the Dutch resistance movement and helped Jewish individuals hide from German forces. During his career, Cordan edited for multiple magazines and ran his own multilingual journal, Centaur. In addition to publishing numerous collections of poetry, prose, and anthropological research, his creative work was also featured in magazines such as Halcyon and the homosexual men’s magazine Der Kreis. Cordan died at the age of 57 while on a research trip in Guatemala.
Klein Voorhees (they/them/their) is a trans agender poet, artist, and translator from North Carolina. They are currently pursuing their M.F.A. in Creative Writing at California College of the Arts. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming in perhappened, deathcap, and the St. Mary’s Processing Crisis Anthology. You can read more of their work here.
