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Milan Richter
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LIGHT?
Dying, Goethe called for more light.
(And his days weren't dark.)
We 've had lots of light since then:
The firing squad lit one
in the breast of the Cummunards,
it blossomed like a fiery rose
in the mud of the trenches,
and blond students fed it
in Berlin's Opera Square
on May 10th, 1933
with a great black heap of books.
(Beyond the high flames features
of a certain Doktor Goebbels glowed,
but the dark time was already here.)
Oh, that lamp in the crematorium furnace
that lamp light on the interrogator's desk
that light of Nagasaki
that light of assassination, invasion, revolution
oh, that light under the Titans' skin* of the SS
Hoping to survive, the poet calls for more darkness.
(And our days are not exactly bright.)
More gentle darkness in the city's womb,
and dark without the glitter and blood of tv news,
and dark that shelters you
from the eyes of police cameras
and spy satellites,
a dark without decaying particles, cells, families...
Spotted by a light Goethe never called for,
you yearn for the darkness of your own thoughts,
for two thousand years of oblivion... a
nd for a little, just a little fond memory
you wouldn't owe today's devils
bargaining for souls that aren't for sale.
But, Mehr Licht!
is said to be Goethe
telling his servant
to throw the shutters wide.
* also skin (coat) of missiles
Milan Richter
(c) Milan Richter Poem supplied by the author.
Milan
Richter, born 1948 in Bratislava, got a Ph.D. in Germanic philology and in
English literature at the
