HILDE DOMIN - SELECTED POEMS 3
Translated into English by Elke Heckel and Meg Taylor

Clouds as Guarantors - Auf Wolkenbürgschaft
You are here - Es gibt Dich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clouds as Guarantors - Auf Wolkenbürgschaft

For Sabka

I am homesick for a land
where I have never been
where I will never go
where all the trees and flowers
know me
and where the clouds
remember me
meticulously
a foreigner who
has no home
in which
to cry her heart out.

I sail
to an island without a harbour.
As soon as we depart
I throw the keys in the sea.
I arrive nowhere.
My sail is like a cobweb in the wind
but it doesn’t rip.
And beyond the horizon
where the great birds
at the end of their flight
dry their wings in the sun
lies a continent
where they have to admit me
without passport
with only the clouds as guarantors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are here - Es gibt Dich

Your place is
where eyes look at you.
Where eyes meet
you come into being.

Held by one call
always the same voice,
it is as if there is just one cry
used by everyone.

You could fall,
but you don’t fall.
Eyes catch you.

You are here
because eyes want you,
to look at you and say to you
that you are here.