AIMING AT SARAH BERNHARDT

You’ve made some good appearances,
touched off maddening applause
and brought tears to so many eyes
that were eager to covet you.

Many times, however, you’ve forgotten
that you didn’t have a large theater
but just the same old daily stage
(that of living one day after the next).

At times, however, you haven’t realized
that there was no audience,
that it wasn’t opening night
and the stalls and boxes weren’t full.

You’ve had the zeal of a leading lady
but rehearsals have worn you out,
and you have shied away from roles
where you had to speak up for yourself.

Alas!, you’ve forgotten so many times
that others had minor roles
and, in certain acts, they also had the ability
as well as the skill to perform parts in the drama.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

BERLIN: JANUARY 1929

Vita set aside
her translations of Rilke.
The telephone was Moabit 37-94,
and Friedrichstrasse station, journey’s end.

One afternoon, at the Funkturm,
alone on their first and last brief escape,
Vita made her understand
how short-lived human passions are.

The rather spirited conversation
and the pulse of such high-tension souls
managed to silence
the lethal human tide.
(The future bombs
didn’t cast a gloom over the afternoon at all.)

24 Brüken Allee, an address,
today a companion to ghosts
from old-time embassies:
the city hadn’t been split.

Virginia returned to London
a week later, ill.
Vita began to feel that
Leidenschaft was a very strange
compound noun.

Actually, neither of the two
had the least inkling
of disaster’s rhetoric.
 

SPRINGTIME

 

We feel so much
like dying when everything
around us
is eager to come to life.

You see, the same as usual:
we don’t know since when,
nor since what sorrow.

(C’est cette manque de tendre
and the lethal fear of reproach:
to leave the image unobscured.)

I don’t know if a dove will greet you
from a window sill in the morning;
nor who will do what in memory of me.

We feel so much
like dying when everything
around us
is eager to come to life.