autobiography
later on i learned it was a friday
when i'd torn loose, screaming,
from my coffin, from my mother.
between the deception of my birth,
sealed with oil
&
water
&
salt,
and the death bred into my bones,
in the endless ages between friday
and black friday, they stuck pins in my arms,
i was baptized and drafted, the sweet
smell of power made it look nice.
once a year the snow would be changed.
i
wore a new shroud every day.
also i observed the four quarters of the sky.
my words drifted off on some kind of wind.
success never burned me, nor fire.
most evenings my liver feels as hard as a rock,
and when it's friday again, i hear screaming,
my own voice screaming in a white shroud,
over dreary ages, from the day of my birth.
i feel awful, i go to sleep thinking:
well i'm out of it. there'll be some other
war, some other dead dog (not me)
will get launched at the moon, and space
as it buries him, will be aghast and start screaming.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
( Translated by Jerome Rothenberg)
