Beckmann, this shall surely break you
Thoughtless, twisting the knife in the shell
Which spat you from the Elba’s listless embrace
And found you in Andora
Where shingles dropped upon your crown
And lowly merchants led you off to Venice

The strawberries are over ripe
I can’t spit out the seeds
And god that child’s smile so enflames me
Oh, the Lido is so changed
Death waits at the door
And all these dreams of Tadzio are torture

Hearing as time pounds at the gates
In three hours I wake, and shout dusk at the dawn
Pan dances with orphaned fawns,
Wild and weary, ankles pierced, bound and drawn

Caskets will line the Thames
Chubby dams burst, wastelands seek to extend
As prose speaks in verse its syntax inverts
And language gives into birth

As I lay hoarry and pale
Scipio readies triremes to sail
So he leads them off to Zama
Like and arrow shot by Rama
And Carthage succumbs to the fate of Mastarna

Oh the light is but a trick
Draußen vor der Tür
When will I receive the death I wish for?
No, I won’t try
Life over-ripe sticks to my lips
And the sky starless and grey,
Is cringing, and begging
To fall in clusters
Proud mountains shudder
Are ground into gutters
Lakes become allergic to water
And I bury myself in the arms of the night.

Trapped between shadows and streetlights
Bone xylophones clatter under the hands of
Death bloated and glutinous,
God grows weary and impotent
In the light, in the light, in the fell fading light

I wade out to the heart of the river
Begging the Elba to send me to sleep
Crying out for any succor
Solitude, safety, or the pang of relief

At the end of the end of the world
All the stars seem clouded diamonds
And to breathe’s to swallow smoke
Drowning and gasping, chasing the exit of hope

Now we are here at the edge of a dream
The tranquil mist shrouded surface
Of the Starnbergersee of my youth
They reflect these years and in their cold arms I find
Truth.