Gewaltige Mutter des Mittag Tods, Die du wonnig die Menschen mähst! Süß sterben sie dir entgegen Auf den Bänken des Parks. In schön heliotropen Kleidern Die Mädchen in blonder Umwölkung Sterben schief lehnend, feucht freudig. Hinter ihnen aber aus dem Rasen Reißest du Rhododendren-Gewalt, Riesige Büschel-Fruchtbarkeit Und des Baumschattens Heimat. Töte auch mich, o Sonne! Du Schwall über grünem Gezwitscher, Die du Mädchen mähst Auf den kinderumspielten Bänken! Töte mich, Daß ich unsteter Lüge vergesse Und des Fäulnis-Lauschens, Daß ich des Feindes In mir und vor mir vergesse!
Almighty mother of this midday death, You who brightly mow its inhabitants! Sweetly they die toward you On the benches in the park. In pretty, heliotropic skirts, In blond gathering clouds die girls Leaning so wrong, joyfully moist. But from the lawn behind them, You wrest the rhododendrons’ might, Enormous bushels of fertility, And this home of tree shade. Kill me too, o sun! You cascade above the green tittering, You who mow young girls On benches swirling with children. Kill me, So that I of a dodgy lie forget And of this decadence eavesdropping, So that I of the adversary In me and before me forget!
Note: title, Almighty Mother (Gewaltige Mutter), taken from the dialectic of the Great Mother and matriarchy popular in in early twentieth-century German thought and art, which was used to sanction not only Free Love but also the pedophilia excoriated here; line 15, swirling with children (kinderumspielten), the rendering, a paraphrase of a rare compound adjective, is based on a nineteenth-century account of the dissipations of “naked Roman emperors” (e.g., Tiberius).
James Reidel | Schuld > Guilt Contents | Mudlark No. 57 (2015)