Today I discovered a cache of poems I wrote in German a few years ago — in March 2010, to be precise. And believe it or not, they didn’t make me cringe. Mostly I was playing with sound and things I had heard or read in classes. I’ll share a few below, for anyone who reads a bit of German:
achtundvierzig nach
sie sprechen und sie lachen
die Bücher
miteinander
zittern, tanzen, murmeln, singen
Farben, Schatten
Licht, das spricht
darf ich hinein?
die Bücher sagen nein
That one actually has some rhyme! Here’s another one, unfortunately without rhyme, inspired by the opening lines of Goethe’s Faust:
schwankende Gestalten
ich erinnere mich
an diese Wörter
sie schwanken in mir
und die Gestalten
sie bilden einen Kreis
und die Kreide kratzt
über den Boden
ich fühle mich—
wie nie vorher—
mein Mund ist trocken
mein Hals sagt nichts
alles geht vorbei
und alles kommt zurück
It’s a totally different voice from the one I typically adopt in English.
It seems that writing poetry in a second language (or third) can be a real paradigm-busting experience. Writing habits from the first language tend to dismantle themselves to make way for that second-language voice with its different set of associations and limitations. And that in turn changes how you go on to write in the first language…
