Why I Need the Birds
...By the time I arrive at evening,
...they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us...
myself and the purple finches,
and rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices—
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken...
German-American poet and translator (1924-2020)
(born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the , Elmhurst College and . She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study. She received awards including the in 1981 and the for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.
Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Things
...we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
...We fitted our shoes with tongues
...and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
...the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.
...we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth...
Imaginary Paintings
6 How Would I Paint the Big Lie
<small>Smooth, and deceptively small
so that it can be swallowed
like something we take for a cold.
...sweet and glossy,
that pleases the tongue
and goes down easy,
never mind
the poison inside.</small>
7 How Would I Paint Nostalgia
<small>...A radiant bride in white
standing above a waterfall,
watching the water rush
away...</small>
Midwinter Notes
On my shelf of photographs
the dead have come to outnumber the living.
They stand like artificial flowers
among the real ones, so lifelike
even God might be fooled.
...Only after
our garden became a graveyard
...did the white stem rise
from the hermetic bulb,
...five lavender petals
...a brilliant contradiction,
out of phase, like an angel
strayed into Time, our world.
An Unanswered Question
If I had been the lone survivor
of my Tasmanian tribe,
the only person in the world
to speak my language
(as she was),
...and if among all those people
staring and pointing and laughing
and making their meaningless sounds
there had been one thoughtful face,
who might have instinctively understood
...the indispensable word
I must pass through the bars
...what word would it have been?
Place and Time
...We're all pillars of salt.
...Where does the music come from
and where does it go when it's over—
the child's unanswered question
about more than music.
My mother is dead, and the piano
...burned with our city in World War II.
...it's still her black Bechstein
each concert pianist plays for me
and... her... fingers
are behind each virtuoso performance
on the stereo, giving me back
my prewar childhood city
intact and real.
Curriculum Vitae
<small>1992</small>
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into confetti. ...
5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones and primrose marshes...
7) My country was struck by history more deadly than earthquakes and hurricanes.
8) My father was... eluding monsters. My mother told me walls had ears. ...
10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed behind in the darkness. ...
13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry. ...
14) Ordinary life. Knots tying threads... The past pushed away, the future left unimagined for the... glorious, difficult, passionate present. ...
17) And then my father too disappeared.
18) I tried to go home... at the door to my childhood, but it was closed... 19) One day... everyone's face was younger than mine.
20)...The brilliant days and nights are breathless in their hurry. We follow...