Clouds, Walking, Reading
No pics from my walk. A little rain and some wonderful clouds (reminding me of Otto Modersohn's obsessive sketching of Wolken). Waiting for Julian Barnes' new book on Shostakovich. Have been flip-flopping between Herbert and the early poems of Thomas Bernhard.
From Bernhard's Auf der Erde und in der Holle (very last poem):
In the Bushes, I Know, Are the Souls
In the bushes, I know, are the souls
of my fathers,
in the corn
is the pain of my father
and in the great black forest.
I know that their lives, erased
before our very eyes,
have found refuge in the ears of corn,
in the blue brow of the June sky.
I know that the dead
are the trees and the winds,
the moss, and the night
which lays its shadows
upon my burial mound.
[Translation by Peter Waugh]
From Bernhard's Auf der Erde und in der Holle (very last poem):
In the Bushes, I Know, Are the Souls
In the bushes, I know, are the souls
of my fathers,
in the corn
is the pain of my father
and in the great black forest.
I know that their lives, erased
before our very eyes,
have found refuge in the ears of corn,
in the blue brow of the June sky.
I know that the dead
are the trees and the winds,
the moss, and the night
which lays its shadows
upon my burial mound.
[Translation by Peter Waugh]
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