does heaven not also hang upon your mouth?

1

Does heaven not hang from your mouth?

Likewise my eyes hang upon your lips,

and your voice is the happiness that results.

Even if you say everything, I will never grasp it,

yet between the vowels and consonants

your breath grazes me, a new sign of life.

2

Let my eyes hang upon your lips,

for does heaven not also hang upon your mouth?

I don't ever want to be separated from your voice.

Awaken me from death.

I will not hear it for another year.

Give me words, a year's supply.

No need to grasp anything, for its sound brings belief,

and I believe every day and then some.

Soon it will be mute, you will be more mute to me,

and ever more quiet will be my slumber

in the stillness, the Last Judgment for my ear.

The trumpets are still, without trumpeters

the end is performed.

[Ingeborg Bachmann, 'Your Voice', from Poems 1957-1961 in Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann]