with raging storms, with purest breath

VI 

Educated in love 

by ten thousand books, 

made wise through the sharing 

of barely changed gestures 

and foolish oaths— 

initiated into love 

but first knowing it here— 

when the lava spilled over 

and its breath reached us 

at the foot of the mountain, 

when finally the sent crater 

surrendered the key 

to these locked bodies— 

We entered enchanted rooms 

and illuminated the dark 

with our fingertips. 

XI 

Wanting summer lightning, you throw the knife, 

slicing through the air to the warmth of its veins; 

 

blinding, as they sprint up from open wounds, 

are the soundless last fireworks you see displayed: 

madness, contempt, and then revenge, 

as remorse follows soon, then sharp disdain. 

You realize that your sword is blunted, 

and finally you feel just how love ends: 

with raging storms, with purest breath. 

It locks you up inside the dream dungeon. 

Where love’s golden hair is hanging down, 

the ladder to emptiness is what you’ll be grasping. 

A thousand and one nights high are the rungs. 

The very last step is the step into nothing. 

And there where you crash exist the old places, 

and to each place you give three drops of blood. 

Deranged, you cling to rootless curls. 

The bell rings out, and you’ve had enough. 

XII 

Mouth, which slept in my mouth, 

Eye that guarded my own, 

Hand— 

and those eyes that drilled through me! 

Mouth, which spoke the sentence, 

Hand, which executed me! 

XV 

Love has its triumph and death has one, 

in time and the time beyond us. 

We have none. 

Only the sinking of stars. Silence and reflection. 

Yet the song beyond the dust 

will overcome our own.

listen to part of ‘Invocation’ here

 

[Ingeborg Bachmann {1926-1973} from “Songs in Flight” in ‘Invocation of the Great Bear’, from Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems]