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548
PARTISAN REVIEW
no game makes them children again. They are celebrating with us
but none of us celebrates anything in common with them . Only we
wounded hear the beauty and see the vastness. They are unriddled
and resoundingly dead. As the saying attests: "Evil will soon invent
its machine" - thus, they are the machines of evil . This evening here
is a different feast! (He shouts into the barracks.) Hey, Site Moth.er,
no background music tonight, no artificially amplified voices,
1;10
flicker tube to distort our clear night. Come: we are celebrating the
hour of hands as free as gods. Tear yourself from your crossword
puzzle. Pour sour booze down the drain . Turn the calendar to the
wall . Switch off the TV for once and roll away from the false images.
Step out of the drinking-waterless cloud and keep the sterile waves
away from your body. Push down the antennas and spread the cro–
cheted white cloth with the inscription "No more blue light in our liv–
ing rooms" on the pallid shrine of death. Hey, Mother Construction
Site. Stop the loose tongues. Let's have radio silence . Push through
the echoless soundbarrier, leap from the deafmute blindness to the
moon and soar towards us into the playready , refreshing hereness
which sets everything aright. (All noises have slowly ceased in the
barracks. Even though it was never more than a background sound,
the quiet has now become more distinct. We hear the rustling of
earth and sky .)
Hey, Mother Construction Site. As there is light , look at yourself.
Look for your eyes. A field, a star. Radiant not melancholy trans–
form your forehead into the diadem, wrap your lace shawl around
your shoulders, let your thigh tremble anew , step from the building
and scream the first scream .
Translated from the German
by
Michael Roloff
