Hugo Ernst Käufer:
Augapfeltiefe („Eyeballdepth”)
(see German original version)
The words you give must be bearable
– no empty talk.
The eye: a window to view the world
the key to the perception of images
the reflection in the eye of the counterpart
the path to the spelling of words
the incessant photo-click in youthful years
the network to visualise thoughts
the rich treasury of recognition
– the eye.
The jugs of sight of the blind are bottomless.
Their inner eye reaches over the edge
boundlessly.
The eye can speak:
eye language
heart eye
eyebright
moon eye
talking eyes
– the eye can speak.
The eye in dialogue with the matters of the world
the hopes of the day
the suffering of the night.
Keep to yourself
when the ship of your wishes, of your hopes
capsizes in stormy seas
returns with empty nets
But speak up irately
when the mighty take the breath from the weak
defend the lambs against the wolves.
Keep to yourself
confide in yourself
eyeballdepth.
Passing the eye
a little boy pushes his wooden toy train
and dreams of far away countries.
Be kind to the light in your eye
in the evening
when darkness knocks on the door.
The eye cannot stand upside-down
The eye cannot hear, the eye cannot smell
The eye cannot breathe, but
The eye can weep.
What you don't behold in early times –
the leaf, the blade of grass, the dew,
you never sense in later years –
the tree, the hay, the rain.
The return of images from the land of Once-Upon-A-Time
timekeeper
history-recaller
eye.
Within an old eye
the steps and rings
of a whole life are retained:
Hope and anxiety
gain and loss.
At first: opening the eyelids in birth
At last: closing the eyelids in death
First and last
rise and descent
First and last
one entire life.
Moments
Grandpa's hands
stroking my hair
calming me
after nightmare's fright.
Moments
My uncle's swift chopper,
when he cut off my bantam's head,
broiling the soup.
How I hated him,
demanded revenge
for later.
Moments
The young anti-aircraft auxiliary,
when, at the end of the nazi war,
after an air attack on the train in Lünen station,
he died in my arms.
The baffled fright
in his open eyes.
God's eye, Satan's eye, Abraxos
We, back and forth
often on the border
often in no man's land
we, the harvest, the toll.
The scion, the cornea of a stranger plugged into another eye
has brightened the darkness of that other one:
helped to see.
We know:
The scion, the cornea was left by a dead person.
Scion in the eye of another life –
thanks to him.
Sundmacher, the ophthalmology professor
in Heine's university pushes aside the darkness,
skillfully encourages the cornea, the scion
to heal in.
On an official letter from the ophthalmology clinic
of the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf on Rhine
the poet's portrait looks at me sadly.
„Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten.”
(„I don't know what it should mean.”)
Maybe he pities me
maybe he is hoping with me for new eyesight.
Companion Heine.
After three weeks the embryo's brain begins to bulge forward
with the eyes of a mite
Already perfect, said the doctor
Creation's calligraphy
Artwork eye.
Some politicians and managers are surrounded by an air
that hurts the eye
makes it hard to breathe.
The gawking mouths bawled fiercely, brawled loudly and happily
when the boxing champions gave eachother the black eye
't was a sweet violet.
The winner kissed the champion's belt:
oh golden hour!
Eyes left! Eyes right! Eyes front!
Stand to attention!
Violence done to eyes.
Let's not conceal that togetherness –
humans are humans everywhere –
is no thorn in our flesh*
During the day my felt pen
writes verses given to me by night
for example
about the talking of the eye.
* the German saying translates as „thorn in the eye”
(Translation from German: Mathias Wittekopf)
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