Black
milk of morning we drink you evenings
we drink you at noon and mornings we drink you at night
we drink and we drink
[…] death
is a master from Deutschland
From: Paul
Celan, Death Fugue (translation by Pierre Joris)
As a child
in the 1960s, I saw war invalids begging in the streets of Vienna. Some of them
drew large, perfect copies of famous paintings on the asphalt with chalk. At
some point, they and these pictures, which seemed to be part of the norm, were
no longer there. I only noticed the disappearance of these pictures from the
streets much later.
There is a
hill in my local forest in the countryside where you can find lots of
mushrooms. In the 1970s, it was still completely rutted by trenches and there
were three crosses at the top, which someone decorated with flowers for All
Saints' Day. They are gone, and now only the attentive, knowing eye can see why
the ground here is a little uneven.
Death is a
master - yesterday from Germany, today here, tomorrow there. How many war
invalids does today´s day make?
