A MILLION NIGHTINGALES ARE SINGING
The Stars. Blue. Expanse.
Flaming song of stars!
A million nightingales are singing.
Springtide light is flashing.
Myriads of eyelashes are flaring up in quivers.
The green happiness of spring-night banquets
Commences its own rutting shine.
Balmy showers take their magic turn:
Millions of nightingales are singing.
Do I recognize a friendly ghost?
I will earnestly contend for it.
The sign wants to be carved into perceiving:
Who knows when my dream-life will be blazing?
Ghosts resemble our gentle animals,
They are fast to sense the nature of attraction.
They heave and hover and weave about
And keep us very gingerly under their spell.
I do not want to lose this light-swarming silence.
An old theurgy must stir here soon from gentleness.
Millions of nightingales are singing.
Kindred voices are urging us through the night.
It seems a moon is smoldering arcanely.
But the night she is too warm, so full of breathing pleasure!
Myriads of sparks fly as if in rut to seek each other.
They whirr back and forth and yet still as a part of spring.
The ghost of spring, the ghost of spring is prowling in the wood-lot!
The broad-leaved forest can wander and anticipate itself,
It sways and waltzes to all the old ways of transformation;
The night is laughing: Big Dipper's daring, Libra is keeping watch.
Here are flashing myriads of dance-besotted queries -
Millions of nightingales are singing.
Millionen Nachtigallen Schlagen
Translated from Theodor Däubler's DAS STERNENKIND.
For my Kirston, on this day, and for bringing his book to me.
An edition of Däubler's poems in letterpress available from us soon.
An edition of Däubler's poems in letterpress available from us soon.
