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Das Dämonische hat mich getroffen. Nie noch ist mir so etwas geschehen. Im Regensturm auf dem Rückweg warst du noch schöner und größer. Und ich hätte mit Dir Nächte durchwandern können.
Mein lieber Bruder, wann bauen wir uns ein Floss
und fahren den Himmel hinunter?
Mein lieber Bruder, bald ist die Fracht zu gross
und wir gehen unter.
Mein lieber Bruder, wir zeichnen aufs Papier
viele Länder und Schienen.
Gib acht, vor den schwarzen Linien hier
fliegst du hoch mit den Minen.
Mein lieber Bruder, dann will ich an den Pfahl
gebunden sein und schreien.
Doch du reitest schon aus dem Totental
und wir fliehen zu zweien.
Ingeborg Bachmann
The Game is Over
My dear brother, when will we build a raft
to float down the sky on?
My dear brother, soon our load will be so heavy
that we'll sink.
My dear brother, onto paper
we'll draw many countries and tracks.
Watch out for the black lines
or you'll fly sky high with the land mines.
My dear brother, I want to be tied to a stake
and scream.
Already you ride out of death valley
and together we will flee.
And our girls, they have the same fevered pulse in their hands and hips. And their laughter is hoarse and brittle and hard as a clarinet. And their hair, it
crackles like phosphorus. It burns. And their heart, it has a syncopated beat, wistfully wild. Sentimental. Our girls are like that: like jazz. And so are our
nights, the girl-rattling nights: like jazz, hot and hectic. Aroused.
Who will write new laws of harmony for us? We no longer need well-tempered pianos. We ourselves are too much dissonance.
Who will make a purple shout for us? A purple deliverance? We no longer need any still-lives. Our life is loud.
We don't need poets with good grammar. We lack patience for good grammar. We need those with the hot feeling that's been sobbed hoarse. Who call a tree tree
and a woman woman and say yes and say no: loud and distinctly and threefold and without a subjunctive.
For semicolons we have no time and harmonies make us weak and the still-lives overwhelm us: for purple are our skies at night. And the purple gives no time for
grammar, the purple is shrill and incessant and mad. Above the chimneys, above the roofs: the world: purple.