Songs
by Gottfried Benn
Issue no. 199 (Winter 2011)

I

O that we might be our ancestors’ ancestors.
A clump of slime in a warm bog.
Life and death, fertilizing and parturition
Would all be functions of our silent juices.

An algal leaf or a sand dune,
Shaped by the wind and basal and heavyset.
Even a dragonfly’s head or a gull’s wing
Would be too evolved and suffer too much. 


II

Contemptible are the lovers, the mockers,
All despair, yearning, and hope.
We are such painfully plague-ridden gods,
And yet we think of God a lot.

The soft bay. The dark forest dreams.
The stars, snowball blossom big and heavy.
Panthers lope silently among the trees.
Everything is strand. Forever calls the sea—