[Poem, German] Jünger, F.G., Das Feuer

Friedrich Georg Jüngers poem "Das Feuer", taken from Gedichte.

Das Feuer

Wohin du mit geschmeid’gem Sprunge
Dich wendest, Feuer überall.
Aus Höhlen strömt mit breitem Schwunge
Rotleuchtend flüssiges Metall.

Das Fruktland sinkt vor dem Vulkane
Und wird zum heißen Lavameer.
Darüber zieht mit goldner Fahne
Die Sonne wild und stolz einher.

Aus diesem flammenhellen Ringe
Ist kein Entkommen, keine Flucht.
Dem Vogelschwarme schrumpft die Schwinge
Und klagend stürzt er in die Schlucht.

Es schießt aus hundert Feuerstellen
Dem Springbrunn gleich die wisse Glut.
Du lechzt nach Kühlung, rufst nach Quellen
Fragst, was erfrischt das tolle Blut?

Willst du dich Salamander nennen,
So zeig es, halt im roten Wind.
Es brennt, doch ohne zu verbrennen,
Des Feuergeists geliebtes Kind.

[Poem] Marinetti, F. T. - To my Pegasus

This poem was first publish 1908 in the volume The Sensual City. It's translated by Elizabeth R. Napier and Barbara R. Studholme and taken from Marinetti, F. T. (2002) Selected Poems and Prose New Haven and London: Yale University Press

To my Pegasus

Vehement god of a race of steel,
space-intoxicated Automobile,
stamping with anguish, champing at the bit!
O formidable Japanese monster with eyes like a forge,
fed on fire and mineral oils,
hungry for horizons and sidereal spoils,
I unleash your heart of diabolic puff-puffs,
and your giant pneumatics, for the dance
that you lead on the white roads of the world.
At last I release your metallic reins…You leap,
with ecstasy, into liberating Infinity!…

At the sound of the pound of your voice…
see how the setting Sun hounds
your bounding steps, accelerating its bleeding
palpitation along the horizon…
It’s galloping there, down in the woods…look!…

What is the matter, handsome demon?…
I’m at your mercy…Take me!
On the ground deafened despite its echoes,
under the sky blinded despite its golden stars,
I go fueling my fever and my desire
with sword blows right in the nose!…
And from moment to moment, I straighten my back
to feel winding round my quivering neck
the cool downy arms of the wind.

It’s your alluring distant arms that draw me!
this wind, it’s your engulfing breath,
fathomless Infinity absorbing me with joy!…
Ah! Ah!…suddenly the gangling black windmills
seem to be running
on their whaleboned canvas wings
as if on gigantic legs…

Now the Mountains get ready to throw
cloaks of drowsy coolness no my flight…
There! There! look! at that sinister curve!…
Mountains, O monstrous Cattle, O Mammoths
trotting heavily along, arching your huge backs,
you are outrun…drowned…
in the maze of mists!…
And dimly I hear
the whirring of your colossal legs
pounding the road in their seven-league boots…

Mountains with cool cloaks of azure!…
Beautiful rivers breathing in the moonlight!…
Shadowy plains! I pass you at full gallop
on this racing monster…Stars, my Stars,
do you hear his bounds, the sound of the pound
of his brazen lungs endlessly exploding?
The bet is on…with You, my Stars!…
Faster!…faster still!…
And no respite, and no rest!
Release the brakes!…You can’t?…
Smash them then!…
Let the engine’s pulse centuple!

Hurrah! No more contact with the filthy earth!…
At last, I break loose and fly freely
over the intoxicating abundance
of Stars streaming in the great bed of the sky!

[Poem] George, Stefan - Secret Germany

Spöknippet came across an english translation of Stefan George's magnificent poem Secret Germany. Even though much of course is lost in the translation it is still published due to the rareness of translations of George's works. As can be felt, not all of its original magic is gone.

Let me stand at your verge,
Chasm, and not be dismayed!

Where irrepressible greed has
Trampled down every inch of
Earth from equator to pole and
Shamelessly wielded relentless
Glare and mastery over
Every nook of the world,

Where in the smothering cells of
Hideous houses, madness
Just has found what will poison
All horizons tomorrow:
Even shepherds in yurtas,
Even nomads in wastes -

Where no more in a stony
Forest valley the she-wolf
- Rugged nurse! - suckles boy twins,
And neither untrodden islands,
Nor a garden of virgins
Dawn to foster the Great,

There in the sorest of trials
Powers below pondered gravely,
Gracious celestials gave their
Ultimate secret: They altered
Laws over matter and founded
Space- a new space in the old . . .

Once down by the southern
Sea I lay on a boulder,
Wrung as lately my kin
Spirit, when breaking through
Olives, the Spook of Noon
With goatee foot flicked me:

'Now that your eyes grew discerning,
Go and find in your sacred
Land primordial soil,
Slumbering lap of fill,
And regions as pathless and dark
As the densest of jungles.'

Pinions of sunny dream,
Carry me close to the depth!

They told me of one who from rock-ridden coast
An instant had seen the Olympian gods
In heavens which split with the light of the dawn,
Whereat his soul was flooded with dread.
He shunned the board where his friends were grouped
And plunged into riotous waters.

In the town where the trivia from everywhere
Are posted on pillars and patches of wall
For people to gape at and hasten on,
No one had eyes for the greater event:
Uncanny through tottering structures and streets
The dangerous prowl of the demon!

In winter he stood in the candle-lit hall,
His shimmering shoulder hidden in folds
The flame on his cheek in the leaves of a wreath,
The god concealed from the stare of fools,
In clear-scented warmth of the winds of spring,
Set foot on flowering courses.

The Listener who knew every person and thing,
Played ball with the stars in a rapturous reel,
The hunter unhunted, yet here he avowed
With stammering lips, his apostle-like form
Transfixed in the gleam of the opaline globe:
'This passes my grasp, I am silenced.'

Then forth from the region of order and peace,
Through sulphurous night a tempest unloosed
The clash and the clamour of savage wars,
The smoulder of worlds in the throes of the end.
And crumbling terrains and shadows unleashed
The silver hooves of the chargers.

I came upon him of the pale-golden hair
Who smilingly lavished serene repose
Wherever he went. He was hailed by us all
The darling of Fortune, but late he confessed
His vigour was drained to give strength to a friend,
His life a sequence of offerings.

I loved him who - my blood in his veins -
Had sung the song only less than the best,
Who idly shattered his lute when he failed
To gain a treasure he once divined,
Who merged with anonymous throngs and bowed
A forehead destined for laurels.

Throughout the country, on roads and in squares,
Wherever I was on the watch, I asked
Omniscient Rumour with hundreds of eyes:
'Have you ever heard of the like?' And he
- Though loth to be startled - replied: 'I heard
Of much - but this is unheard-of''

Let me mount to your height,
Summit, and not be destroyed!

Who shed, who of you brothers
Doubts, unshocked by the warning,
That what you most acclaim, what
Most you value today is
Rank as leaves in the fall-wind,
Doomed to perdition and death!

Only what consecrate earth
Cradles in sheltering sleep
Long in the innermost grooves,
Far from acquisitive hands,
Marvels this day cannot grasp
Are rife with the fate of tomorrow.