eia wasser regnet schlaf

Elisabeth Borchers is eighty today. She came to fame with her first publication, a poem called “eia wasser regnet schlaf” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1960, because the poem started a scandal that produced endless discussion in the paper around the question “is this really a poem and if so, is it worth printing.” It sound like a very quaint discussion today, especially if you think that that very year Paul Celan recieved the best-known German literary award, the Georg Büchner prize. Borchers went on to publish some 10 volumes of poems, a number of books of various proses and much commentary on writing and pictures, working all he while for several of the major German publishers, mainly Suhrkamp. There seem to be two volumes of her work in print in English translation. Here to wish her happy birthday, my early mornign translation of her best-known poem:

hush water rains sleep

1.

hush water rains sleep
hush evening swims into the grass
who goes to the water becomes sleep
who comes to evening becomes grass
white water green sleep
great evening small grass
there comes there comes
a stranger

2.

what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we take off his boots
we take off his coat
we lay him in the grass

my child it’s dark in the river
my child it’s wet in the river

what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we take off the water
we dress him in evening
and carry him back

my child you shouldn’t weep
my child it’s only sleep
what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we will sing him the water song
we will say him the grass prayer

then he’ll love to return

3.

there goes there goes
a stranger
into the great grass this small evening
in white sleep the green wet
and goes to grass and becomes an evening
and comes to sleep and becomes a wet
hush evening swims into grass
hush watersleep rains

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4 Responses

  1. poet CAConrad says:

    Oh my fucking GOD, I’m enchanted!

    Seriously, quite seriously, it’s like reading her poem puts a spell on the reader, the brow softens, the mouth slips open a bit, everything about the reader is a bit of flesh on lamb’s skin, only the lamb isn’t skinned, but very much alive, warm, musky, fantastic!

    This is incredible, and I feel like I need to go cry somewhere,
    CAConrad

  2. Andrew Laird says:

    It is good to discover your fine and supple translation of Elisabeth Borchers debut poem, Pierre. Would that she were more accessible in translation.

    I have a question, hope is that you may be able to shed some light on? A passage of hers, quoted by George Steiner in his essay ‘Silence and the Poet’ and also by way of epigraph in Anne Michael’s, ‘What the Light Teaches’ has long intrigued me. This constellation reads:

    ” I break open stars and find nothing, and again nothing, and then a word in a foreign tongue.”

    I’m wondering if you might know when or where this occurred to her and so in her work?

    With thanks and best to you. . .

  3. Andrew Laird says:

    If I come up with anything along the way I’ll be sure to give you a heads up.

    Be well and always wonder. . .

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