But if I say, “Soon a gigantic wind will blow over you all,
A gruesome wind from God
And nothing will be left of any of you,”
Then you splutter and say, “He is a poet.”
(I.e., he should concern himself with books and broads,
but not with the delicate, fundamental, incalculable
cogs and wheels of politics and the intricate swinging system
of left and right, for and against, red or dead.)
My very dear friends,
On this winter’s day, the first of the year 1962,
There is much that I love, including, for example,
My wife, my three brothers, my father and my mother,
And there is much that I abhor, including, for example,
Those who have a lot of money when I have too little,
Writers who write badly and women without necks.
Well, of what I cherish and what I hate,
There will soon, after that wind, be nothing left.
Friends, God came to me and said,
“Claus, I made you out of nothing, what do you think of that?”
And I said, “Thank you very much, God.”
And he said, “And to nothing you will return. Huh?”
And I said, “Thank you very much, God. Just say the word.”
But then a man came up to me and said,
“I’d rather be dead than red,
And if I want to die then so do you.
I’d rather be one hundred per cent dead than just a little bit red.
All hands on deck, our ship will never sink.
None of us will ever be even a little bit pink!”
And I said, “Thanks a lot, man, but I pass.”
And he said, “Wars ennoble when they are noble wars,
fought for freedom’s holy cause.”
Then I said, “Thanks a lot, man, but I pass,
Because what’s going to come is no war
But a single gruesome, obscene wind from your God
And after that, nothing else.”
And I said, “I don’t want to see your God’s arse.”
Nothing else after that? Will all our eyeless
Toothless, chickenless grandchildren slough off
Their blistered skin down to the sixteenth toe?
Where in the blackest night does a blind man see a lighter black?
I hope that the gentlemen*
Will be able to explain that to you shortly.
I already know it all too well (I am a poet)
And it sickens me to realise
How I am making a fool of myself.
Because how can I make a fist?
One officer with a regulation truncheon
Would take care of the brainwork in my head in a jiffy.
Let alone: 3 police officers and 2,000 soldiers. Let alone the
Millions who would rather be red than dead.
There’s nothing to be done about it, so I do nothing
Except say these words, which also do nothing,
To you who also do nothing.
Admit it, it’s insane.
Because anyone who’s not spent and bent from hope and despair
Isn’t sitting here
But waiting in their warm house with coffee and cake
And calculating which corner of the cellar
Is best for the construction of a better, double, crossways cellar,
For later. When the wind comes.
My very dear friends,
When that wind descends over you tomorrow
And you are taken up in Gods’ fart
What good will hope and despair do you?
Let us head homewards,
Because don’t you see how paltry brittle fragile
This peace is,
When someone like me argues about it
And someone like you and you and you and you
With spent bent words and nicely flammable
Banners and books.
That is why, dear friends, there will be
No message from me on the first day of the year,
But an announcement for the population.
This is the announcement.
Go home. Later on television there will be
The Tales of Hoffmann, Eurovision.
Watch it.
Afterwards, once you have digested your evening meal
And your thought processes are a little slower,
Sit down in front of your mirror,
Pull out your breadknife,
Hold it against your throat, and recite
The prayer of those who order and rule your days,
The prayer of your governments on earth,
Who are the bowels of God.
Our Father
Who art in Heaven
Blessed be Thy Bomb
Your Kingdom come
Your Megatons ignite here on earth
As they do in Heaven.
Give us this day our nuclear weapons
And forgive us our provisional peace
As we forgive those who annoy us by moaning for peace.
And lead us not into the temptation of disarmament
That we may incinerate and disappear
For ever and ever
Amen.
* At Krasnapolsky, the speakers after Claus were the clergyman Kater, the biologist Van der Lek, the teacher H. Herbers and councillor Van der Sluis-Fintelman.
from Peripheral Poems to L’Inferno, Canto XIII [1962]
1
Where are you going? Why? Hollow questions, these,
and perfectly suited to fathers and judges!
We danced around their questions, spinning, swish, swish,
we, perfectly vacuous, we, ornate dolls.
“Just don’t get us pregnant!” the girlies screeched
and the menfolk held back meekly
between a squeal and a bounce, and a pounce.
Oh no, nowhere on earth
did we feel more at home
than under the maddest of skirts.
But God sent down a surly aviator
to sprinkle his ingredients among us:
virtues, wrinkles, solitude.
The nights grew older and longer.
And then, without a sign or word, a grumbling verdict
was passed. That’s right! Justice could be done!
How else can we explain that we
unnecessarily, improbably, unjustly,
were dancing slowly by the sea?
Now often, when the evening falls like snow,
a thing or creature moves towards us. And it
reaches us and in our pity-hollowed trunks,
it bears its fatal young.
from An Eye for an Eye [1963]
(after the ancients)
1 Him
My soul says, Run,
even if it costs you money and love
So says my soul
But I don’t move an inch, I can’t
Because my soul, the snake, is still mad about that little
black-haired bitch!
2 Her
An evening like any other. Nothing
to tell me you were present in the world.
I received no notification
I could have missed you
I could have stayed home that afternoon,
fallen ill, met your cousin instead of you
Someone else would have taken me that night