Beckmann, this shall surely break you Thoughtless, twisting the knife in the shell Which spat you from the Elba’s listless embrace And found you in Andora Where shingles dropped upon your crown And lowly merchants led you off to Venice
The strawberries are over ripe I can’t spit out the seeds And god that child’s smile so enflames me Oh, the Lido is so changed Death waits at the door And all these dreams of Tadzio are torture
Hearing as time pounds at the gates In three hours I wake, and shout dusk at the dawn Pan dances with orphaned fawns, Wild and weary, ankles pierced, bound and drawn
Caskets will line the Thames Chubby dams burst, wastelands seek to extend As prose speaks in verse its syntax inverts And language gives into birth
As I lay hoarry and pale Scipio readies triremes to sail So he leads them off to Zama Like and arrow shot by Rama And Carthage succumbs to the fate of Mastarna
Oh the light is but a trick Draußen vor der Tür When will I receive the death I wish for? No, I won’t try Life over-ripe sticks to my lips And the sky starless and grey, Is cringing, and begging To fall in clusters Proud mountains shudder Are ground into gutters Lakes become allergic to water And I bury myself in the arms of the night.
Trapped between shadows and streetlights Bone xylophones clatter under the hands of Death bloated and glutinous, God grows weary and impotent In the light, in the light, in the fell fading light
I wade out to the heart of the river Begging the Elba to send me to sleep Crying out for any succor Solitude, safety, or the pang of relief
At the end of the end of the world All the stars seem clouded diamonds And to breathe’s to swallow smoke Drowning and gasping, chasing the exit of hope
Now we are here at the edge of a dream The tranquil mist shrouded surface Of the Starnbergersee of my youth They reflect these years and in their cold arms I find Truth.