Franz Schubert: A Press Conference
by Adam Zagajewski
translated by Clare Cavanagh

Yes, my life was short, yes, I loved,
felt a light growing, yes, under
my fingers sparks were born.
Yes, I had little time, I didn't know
how much, I pitied Gretchen,
dead youth, the unrequited.
No, the flame wasn't mute, yes,
I ran through icy forests,
chased by snow, yellow stars,
and by the strangeness of style itself; no, not the police,
I don't know if it was a devil. There was no epoch, only
green grass, ash trees, becalmed
objects, dragonflies over ponds,
but no epoch, a wooden floor,
reticent chairs, yes, Vienna,
the taste of coffee, same as now,
pigeons on the windowsills. No, I didn't
foresee the Spring Tide of Nations,
I don't know, don't remember, this question
is too personal. No, I'm not
familiar with Wagner's music. Can we
communicate? Regret, even envy, 
I don't know whether it's fate, a glove,
such delicate snowflakes, if only
they don't turn into a blizzard.
The green eyes of that girl.
My destiny was too big, like a tent,
my heart throbbed so clumsily 
in those huge rooms, yes, talent,
teeth crushing bitter coffee beans.
No, I was afraid, I was surrounded on all sides,
the armies of mercenaries charged, straight at me, 
ah, gentlemen, how could you
compare me to Admiral Nelson,
no, shadows bellowed, whispers
pealed like cathedral bells, appearances
barked, yes, I admit I was wrong
sometimes, how could I know
that I was Schubert? I was in the state
of becoming, looked for a way, a color, 
you can't know me; only an echo.
Yes, I was in that strait where
suffering changes into song,
yes, evergreen forests and unrequited love,
the joy of being indifferent, precisely 
I wanted to say, the happiness
of expression, halfway
between life and death,
exactly halfway, yes, even here
the cheers of dancing people reach us,
but they clot in the gelatin of memory.
Don't turn back, don't take the wrong direction,
but of course you can't transform life
into a Lied, it's only a very small Noah's Ark,
you know, gentlemen, not people but 
species, not flowers but specimens,
not fragrances but descriptions. While we ran
wild in the meadow's luxury,
in weeds and in wind, in dandelions and anemones,
in the huge plural of sounds and colors,
passionate and speechless, submissive to the demands
of breathless messengers, in jubilation,
in sin, in prayer, morning
and evening, in boredom and laughter,
that eternal dance lasted, May, June,
so many things were happening, fear and games,
cut fingers, gaping mouth,
real kisses and kisses only
in daydreams, braids, ears of wheat,
your glances, a veranda, silence,
and nothing, the crimson of the fall, yes, I remember
everything, larks on long threads,
poppies, a hazel grove, the warm brick of the city,
the voices fading in the dusk, and night—
a box in which children hide
their treasures, the sleep and the vigil, Venus
in the pale sky shivering from cold. 
Yes, it is even better now, only two lips
talk to themselves in the singing,
a piano nearby in its gleaming tuxedo.
Yes, I am tired now, and no, it's not 
a complaint.

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First published in Without End by Adam Zagajewski (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2003). Translated by Clare Cavanagh.

(((Shylock))) To Netanyahu
by Jeremy Radin

God is lonely & it’s your fault.
At the breakfast table you have forgotten
God, & growling about your dry cleaning
& certainly reviewing your various
intelligence reports. God is lonely
though you send to the realms reams
of gardeners & poets & schoolchildren,
though you hoard, as if possessed,
the tools that fill God’s rooms—
it’s not what God wants. God wants you.
God longs for you, Benjamin, sad Bibi,
just as God has longed for every bloodless
lizard wreaking havoc in the celestial desert.
As you writhe amongst your underlings,
as they suck the petroleum out of your ass
at the climax of your unctuous orgies
God watches the bombs fall onto the city,
onto hospitals & pigeons & billions
of olives, which you make every effort
to send in your stead, to send instead
of sending yourself, because you know that what
God wants to say to you, & you know you’ll be
from history deleted by the saying, it’s why you say
God’s name so often, so loudly, which makes
God so terribly lonely. When you say God’s name
each God that leaves your sloganeer’s mouth
pushes God a little further away, into the loneliness
to which you have devoted yourself, the loneliness
you long for, but which cannot ever be yours
because everywhere you look, look!—all
you have killed (& all you cannot) keeping
you, keeping you company.

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First published in Rejected Lit Magazine, Issue 11.

Love Story of Beginning and End
by Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

I had a boyfriend who once told me
it's more humane to shoot and eat deer,
showing me a video about the inevitability
of their prolonged starvation in the wild:
If I were a deer, he said—
I thought this only happened
in movies, but he was the first person I ever saw
pound the floor with his fists
when he sobbed, and begged me not to go.
My friend once told me
the story of the father of a friend who one day
went to Brazil on business forever
and not only that, but found it in him
to call his wife, and tell her so:
I've found a new woman; I'm never coming back
or something to that effect, as my friend relayed it
to me, and I remember wondering how else
it could have gone. What he could have done
differently. What he should have.
For some reason I'll never know, my mother
loved to tell anyone who would listen the story
of my piano teacher's wife, who one day
went for a hike alone
and had a stroke. Though she was healthy,
my mother would quickly clarify,
and it was not a question
of health, but a faulty vein inside of her
she never could have known. And though
my mother told it like a cautionary tale,
how could it have been, unless the moral of
the story was what Rilke said about how the end
grows inside of you like a fruit.
I used to think this was true. That people
wore their end on them, unknowable
as skin, and as visible, and then I sat on his couch
for the last time, the couch of that heroic
hunter of dying deer, and thought how
there was a beginning to this,
though I couldn't find it
and I would have to get off
that couch and go home one way
or another, and that staring at his hands
I could not imagine how.
After I walked through his door
for the last time, he left the city
and it was no longer his door. And did it start
when we met? In the car, when I was a child,
my mother would often cry in the driver's seat
and ask God why he had punished her
with me, and when I began
to cry, too, the first time it happened,
she turned and asked me what I was
crying for and I remember thinking earlier that day
we had laid on the kitchen floor
together, drawing pictures on butcher paper,
and I had messed up while drawing
our house and the more I tried
to fix it it only got worse
until eventually to keep me
from tears of frustration my mother took a red crayon
and drawing flames over it said look
now it's just a fire and as we sat there
on that couch I remembered
he did not only hunt deer, that boy,
he also loved watching birds, and would show me
videos of birds of prey moving in for the kill
in slow motion, making the osprey's sudden
plunge into water suddenly possible,
every beat of the wing, every drop of water
clarified to a moment of its own
and as he kept asking me what happened I thought
how I wanted the answer, too.

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New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
by Allen Ginsberg

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone
 

April 2, 1994

Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amazing
Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church
in-the-Bouwerie

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First published in Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997 (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1999).

Poem With a Deadline, or, There Are Some Crocuses at the Edge of the Driveway
by Ryler Dustin

Today I wanted to write you a birthday poem
though now it is nearly four PM
and you’ll be home soon, carrying February air
in your hair, your cheeks
flushed in the way you hate
but I love as you hurry to the bathroom
and pee with the door open
telling me everything about the crocuses
that appeared outside or a meeting derailed
by a professor who won’t retire
but feels a touching concern
over local songbirds, while our cat turns
soft eddies against your flexed calves.
And though Duke Ellington said I don’t need time,
I need a deadline, when you come home
in ten or twenty minutes, my poem unfinished
and the table we paid too much for
littered with false starts, you’ll see me
for what I am: a man surrounded
by failed attempts, torn pages like fallen leaves,
having spent too much of my careening life
thinking I could feel like someone else
if I kept starting over, or that I’d be ready
for death when it came, until you and I
went to get flowers for Jessica’s party
and agreed on the waxflowers
because we liked how feral they looked,
how out of place in their plastic sleeves
and wanted something better for them.
Now even these gray afternoons
when I’ve finished work, cleaned the house
and wait for you to come
back to me, splitting my life open,
airing it out, I want even these moments
to last longer. I like the way the silence
makes me think of you, how much life we have
to fill it with. Though I used to, I no longer wish
for anything to end.

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The Road to Desire is However Many Doves
by Ellie Laabs

When we drove off that day, the sky 
was waning and the chickens of the heart 
had just come home to roost. For weeks, 
I ran my hands under water until my skin 
became the space where gravel used to be. 
All night, the darkness wove in spruce and howl. 
My gut splintered like a walking stick. After 
the gold rush, any narrative of servitude is easier 
than the truth. These days, I try to love less
like a maid. My solace lets its fingers out far—
the sigh of stallions in their pen, the scent
of pent-up longing. When you hold my hair 
in your hands, I picture the real world. 
Something golden and burning. 

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Piercework 
by Teja Sudhakar

       after Spandita Malik’s Vadhu: The Embroidered Bride

I was young—
 you can see it
 in my face.
 My nose, my lips
 slung down with
 gold. I clutched
 my blood earned
 money close to
 my stomach.
 For the wedding,
 they said,
 keep your face
 covered, your
 hair, wear
 red to remind him
 what’s inside you.
 I had never been
 touched before.
 I remember oiling
 the broken lines
 between my fingers,
 dragging vermillion
 along my scalp.
 The thing about
 piercework:
 the needle goes
 through, arrives back
 the same color, still
 in one piece.
 Some wounds
 are small enough
 holes in the fabric
 never show.
 When I told my family,
 they didn’t
 believe me. Said maybe
 I had not knelt hard
 enough, had not ashed
 my forehead. I walked
 to the shelter one night
 in the rain. There,
 all day, I stitched:
 if my new life
 wouldn’t start, all I could
 do was re-pierce the past.
 I looped the tiny peonies
 outside my parents’
 house. I pierced them
 all through him, head
 to toe, framed
 in gold leaves.
 As mercy,
 I left one eye
 uncovered, a stem
 hovering over it.
 So he can still see me
 when I leave this place.
 So he can see me
 with my face clear,
 woundless, wearing
 anything but red.

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
 
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
 
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
 
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

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First published in Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Random House, 1982). Translated by Stephen Mitchell.

How to Give a Lecture on How to Eat an Elephant
by Jordan Hamel

On the faculty hiring committee, I march, 
demanding they acknowledge me 
and my virtues. I tell them I am decent. 
I never thought about killing someone
except myself, even then I didn’t do it. 
Despite myself & the myself I found 
in everyone else, I kept living, growing up 
to becoming the world’s most singular professor, 
giving my only lecture: ‘How to Eat an Elephant’. 
Sure, everyone knows one bite at a time. 
Committee, I’m here to tell you, nothing matters. 
Trunks can be broiled to the consistency of salmon.
My ‘Elly Belly soft tacos’ are second to none. Listen, 
members of the committee, I have been the elephant, 
no, I mean I was in the room, when it almost happened.
Now that room is the elephant in every room I enter,
so stop asking me about my qualifications or why 
I’m on the desk screaming. Soups & broths are good 
if you can find a big pot. Ears are great bacon substitutes.
Hire me now & give me money forever. I didn’t do it, 
but I really wanted to. Please, don’t tell anyone, 
but the secret is you never really finish the elephant. 
So many rooms have made a meal out of me.

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First published in The Sonora Review.

Girl / Guāi 乖
by Jenny Qi

In Lisbon I bought boba from a girl who looked twelve, maybe  
a small fifteen. We speak Mandarin and I hear her obedience.

‍乖 we praise the child who does what she is told / works          
the family business / fills out forms her parents can’t read /
earns her keep / makes herself useful / dutiful / demure.  

‍乖 we praise the child who follows rules / anticipates needs /
keeps quiet / keeps to herself / keeps secrets / keeps unseen
and unheard / respectful / well-behaved / docile / obedient.

‍Google translates 乖 to “good.”
Only an obedient daughter is good.

My father said I was a bad daughter
when I did not obey absolutely.

‍The girl in the boba shop is maybe still good / a pleasure            
to have in class / does what’s expected / doesn't ask why /                    
feels indebted to her parents for keeping her alive.

‍乖 we praise the girl who will make a good wife / good
daughter / good carer / good maid / good server / good
worker / good breeder / good ant / good lamb / good corpse.

‍乖 we praise the woman who lets everyone else eat first /
supports her husband / supports her child / supports her parents / supports her
in-laws / saves nothing for herself.  

‍In high school I asked my mother why she was deferential        
to an old man who insulted her / why she sent money to her
brothers / why she felt guilty / why she did not leave.  

‍I don’t remember her answer or if she was silent.
乖 we praise a woman who is silent.
乖 we praise a woman who complies.  

A dead woman is silent.
Is a dead woman good?

乖 I was praised only
when I did something I did not want to.  
Obedience is to bury yourself.

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First published in ONLY POEMS.

Ocean of Earth
by Guillaume Apollinaire
translated by Ron Padgett

      To G. de Chirico

I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes

                        House of dampness
                        House of burning
                        Season’s fastness
                        Season singing
                  The airplanes are laying eggs
                  Watch out for the dropping of the anchor

Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
         And is never still

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First published in Poetry (October 2015). Translated by Ron Padgett.

in therapy, snow white learns to use I-feel statements
by Indrani Sengupta

• all my parts are invitations to a party. I will not be attending.

• I have never once been naked. there are always rabbits, voles,
   the many-irised dark.

• and men who think they owe me things.

• in the mirror I decouple into mirror and girl, losing nothing.
   there is no ask. there is no functional mouth. we cannot even
   touch each other.

• the mirror and I have more hands than I could bear alone.

• the mirror bleeds an outrageous simulacrum of my bleeding,
   pinks the satin and clocks the moon's gradations, wanly. I feel

• winter comes all at once or not at all. which is to say, winter comes
   at once and I cannot glove, boot, outpace my hunger. I feel

• I have swallowed the unsatisfactory object, satisfactorily.

• I have learned to learn to love the given name.

• the men who think they owe me things are the men who
   think they are invited. they want salmon cakes & toothpicks
   & warm bowls of rosewater to hoick themselves into.

• these men are all spit and no blood. I feel.

• I feel “I feel” is a new sort of stripping, with neither you nor I titillated.

• satin, spruce, the dangling invitation of my hair.

• and the parson was invited. and the masons were invited, and the
   miller the tailor the king,

• where I was the party, I feel
   I was the party, I feel
   the halls juddering like veins.

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Look
by Laura Kasischke

Look! I bear into this room a platter piled high with the rage my 
mother felt toward my father! Yes, it's diamonds now. It's pearls, 
public humiliation, an angry dime-store clerk, a man passed out at the 
train station, a girl at the bookstore determined to read every fucking 
magazine on this shelf for free. They tell us that most of the billions
of worlds beyond ours are simply desolate oceanless forfeits in space. 
But logic tells us there must be operas, there have to be car accidents 
cloaked in that fog. Down here, God just spit on a rock, and it became 
a geologist. God punched a hole in the drywall on earth and pulled
out of that darkness another god. She—

just kept her thoughts to herself. She just—

followed him around the house, and every time he turned a light on,
she turned it off.

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First published in Poetry (October 2006).

I'll romanticize it if I want to
by January Santoso

Lip gloss makes a kiss stain 
like Vegas. In my red room rains 
a thousand digi-tokens. So called 
broken men come, ho hum,
to fill my little cracks with liquid gold
like kintsugi. I am repair; I flip my hair
and it ripples like a wave. Like water, 
if you look deep enough,

you’ll see your reflection.

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A Pious Woman
by Gabriela Mistral
translated by Randall Couch

I want to see the man of the lighthouse,
I want to go to the rocky point,
taste the wave in his mouth,
see the abyss in his eyes.
I want to reach him, if he's living,
old man of salt and brine.

They say he looks only eastward
—walled up while still alive—
I want to cut him off from his waves
so in place of the abyss he'll see me.

He knows all about the night
that's now my bed and my road:
knows undertows, octopus, sponges,
knows a cry that ends all knowing. 

His faithful, battered chest
is spat on by the tides,
he's whistled at by gulls
and white as any wound,
and so still, so mute and absent,
he seems as yet unborn. 

But I go to the lighthouse tower,
climbing the knife-edged track,
for the man who's going to tell me
the earthly and the divine. 
One in each arm, I bring him
a jug of milk, a sip of wine...

And he keeps listening to seas
that love nothing but themselves.
But maybe now he listens to nothing,
stalled in forgetfulness and salt. 

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First published in Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Randall Couch.

After Another Doctor Has Given Up
by Chrissy Martin

I deserve to indulge, buy a burrito
smoothly swaddled to rip open
with my teeth, reveal soft meat.
Find a public spot on the riverwalk
where the tourists sip salty margaritas,
search for a place to feast their eyes.
And perfect—it begins to rain.
I deserve a body felt by water. As I take
the first bite of flesh and heat, I release.
Cry in fat drops that season my food
and lick the new brine from my meat.
I made this. My body poured forth
and made better. My sorrow is seen
by so many. The mourning is decadent
like licking batter from the bowl, a large
pizza for myself with breadsticks
and tonguing clean garlic butter
from the thin skin between each finger.
My eyes so green against the red
ringed around them, look feral.
Tourists line the bridges a story above,
put their bellies to the barrier and lean
like children while the zoo monkeys
fuck, disgusted and can’t stop gawking.

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First published in Whole, Holy, Hot by Chrissy Martin (Write Bloody Publishing, 2026).

I Was A Superhero
by Basman Aldirawi

Today, I fantasized 
I was a superhero. 
And yes, before you ask,
I wore my underwear 
over my pants. 

My name was not Basman
but BASMAN in shiny letters.
My weapon? Pen and notebook!
My superpower? Truth!

I practiced facing Sabra, 
that fancier, fitter, whiter
Israeli superhero, so much better
in the eyes of the world.

Now, we stand face to face.
I have the strongest weapon!
I begin to speak—bold, clear— 
yet suddenly her rocket
obliterates my voice.

And I am dying.

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First published in ONLY POEMS.

The Applicant
by Sylvia Plath

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

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First published in Ariel by Sylvia Plath (Faber and Faber, 1965).

Pity the Man
by Christian Wiman

Pity the man who’s mastered all 
the dialects of silence,
who suffers the arpeggios of snow
and in the bright kaleidoscope of fall, 
as the colors combine and crescendo, 
hears the oak tree plead release.

Pity the man who understands
the gift and gravity of what is not, 
who lives to its conclusion
the doctrine of Saint Paul:
if being more means being less, 
God’s truest form is godlessness.

Pity the man whom history missed, 
who, as the lie like a parasite
ate brain by brain into a single sheep, 
remained immune.
Soul is the oath that he must keep, 
loyal to this country called Alone.

Pity the man whose last command
comes from a cloud or a cup of tea,
his task to stand with and to withstand 
the hard wind and what it blows,
to reconcile the rage in the rapist’s eyes 
with the power that perfects the rose.

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Nine minutes and 49 seconds with Ludwig van Beethoven
by Paul Brucker

I wish to send you news of me today.
But, then, I think, by doing so,
I would be trying too hard to make myself important
to you again, 
after these 30 years.
It’s best to let the past enjoy its life in the past.
Yet, how often I wish to have people such as you
about me. 

I live far away from nearly everybody
whom I love or could love.
My best friends have not heard from me for years,
especially if we had a row.

If I think I’ve been mistreated and feel hurt, 
nothing can convince me I’m wrong. 
I know the purest, most innocent feelings can be misconstrued.
The pain you caused me has long since been forgiven.
There are moments I long to be with you.
I shall never find compensation
for losing you.

At the first light of day, I look out the window.
The forest is as lovely and vivid to me
as you and the day we parted.

They say I’ve grown more coarse, but remain honest and unaffected,
that I bluntly say whatever I think
and my thoughtlessness prevents me from seeing
matters in their proper light.
In my letters, they say it’s hard to find out what I mean.
Great thoughts drift through me
but I have no command over words.
What do I care for commas, semicolons or periods?
What do I care for prudence and self-restraint?
It’s all the same to me.

What most people wish to see and hear
is what they see and hear.
They have no sense for the power of beauty,
no appreciation for sweetness and light.
What they say amounts to nothing.
They do nothing to make themselves understood.
Mostly, they only see themselves in others.
But, then, I saw the best parts of myself in you.

I’m told you’ve never been back to Vienna.
Let me reassure you that you still cannot find an honest servant here.
From the emperor to the black boot,
all are worthless.
They jump about! They always begin right at the top!
Always maestros! Always D-flat!
They beat upon kettles and frying pans,
blow whistles and horns
to drive away demons of evil and ill luck.
As long as they have brown beer and sausages,
they will never know despair.

I still have enemies, by no means few.
Many pianists here are my deadly enemies.
Otherwise, I might enlighten them
on the right position and use of the hands,
particularly the thumb.

After we parted, I improvised every night,
sometimes variations on a given theme,
sometimes with no direction
except where my heart wandered.
I would later learn an enemy,
capable merely of fashionable melodies of no significance,
had noted down my peculiarities in composing
and passed off my music as his own.

One night I improvised at a social gathering.
Suddenly, I turned around and saw the fools were weeping.
I ran home, never to play for them again.

I, on the other hand, fear to hear other people’s music
on the off chance it would sacrifice my originality.

Did I bore you often with complaints about my teachers?
I’m still compelled to take exception.
They were envious and did not wish me well.
Of my first three trios, Haydn advised me not to publish
the C minor, though he knew it was the best.
Plus, he insisted I note on the title page, “pupil of Haydn.”
Yes, I had instruction from him
but I learned nothing from him.
Nor from Albrechtsberger (pedantic).
Nor Salieri (trivial).

Ah, whatever is good and beautiful needs no teachers.
It simply exists without anyone’s help.

And there was a chance, even after we parted,
I should be the happiest of men
if the demon had not forever pitched his tent in my ear.
If I had any other profession, it would not be so bad.
The very sense which should be more highly developed in me
than in other men,
a sense I once possessed in its most perfect form.

At least we were together before the demon claimed me in full.

What humiliation to stand beside someone who hears
a flute in the distance and I hear nothing.
In the theater, to lean against the railings
close to the orchestra and still not hear
the high notes or the singing voices.
And when people talk softly, to hear 
their tones, but not their words.

My ears whistle and roar incessantly.
I still have a burning terror I must reveal myself.
In conversation, it’s a marvel most people only think
I’m absentminded. 

Night and day, I avoid social functions.
Refined conversations, mutual effusions of thought
are denied to me.

I cannot bear to be yelled at
and I cannot bear to say to men, 
goddamn you, speak louder,
for I am deaf.

Lavater believed he could heal my sickness
through the power of his right hand.
For years, impudent doctors, like him, aggravated my affliction.

I easily might have put an end to my life.
Only one thing held me back: Art.
Oh, it seemed impossible to leave this world
until I produced all I feel capable of producing.

I live only in my scores and before one is completed,
another is already on the way.
I often write three or four works at the same time.

In these works, every theme is elaborated --
mysteries, uncertainties and doubts --
my notes functional rather than decorative,
in a manner peculiar to truth, different from the rest.

They pay me next to nothing
for the work that takes so much time and effort.
Owing to unreliable copying, I have to examine
each voice individually.
To translate my art to strings,
whole passages must be omitted or changed.

I do not need to change anything in my style of composition
though the difficulties of my work are often pointed out to me.

“Fidelio,” for instance, they can’t perform 
nor do people wish to hear it.

Meanwhile, for years, I prayed, let me find her at last,
a woman, such as you, who would strengthen virtue in me, 
and who is permitted to be mine.

But fate or the configurations of my brain
that dictate personality and ability
would not allow it.

As I demonstrated to you, I am not consistently virtuous.
Therefore I meet disgrace
and no woman can endure me.

Alas, I’ve considerably lowered my standards.
Recently, I set my sights on a peasant girl
whose father is renowned for slovenliness.

I spy her across the fence, pitchfork in hand,
She flaunts her charms on a cart laden with hay and manure,
and performs the waggle dance,
the one bees use
to communicate the direction and distance of food.

Oh how she ignores me as I wave my white handkerchief!
She prefers green farm hands
adapted to the environment
and most likely to reproduce.

Resignation! What a miserable refuge.
Yet for me it’s all that remains.
It’s a curse.
The most excellent among us derive joy
from suffering.

It’s only my music that matters.
I’m not a philosopher or saint,
a lover or father. 

In life, you travel and find a nice inn
and though you like it, 
it doesn’t mean you want to stay there forever.
For us, my darling, it was a place of passage merely.

I would be happy enough again to own an angora
waistcoat knit by your own hand.
The last one fashion has ages ago made unfashionable
and I can only hold it dear to me in my wardrobe
and fancy there’s still a scent of you inside it.

Recommend virtue to your children
because virtue alone, not money,
can grant happiness.
Give my best to your husband.
They tell me he is an excellent man.

If you go to the ruins at Baden, think that I lingered there.
If you wander through the mysterious fir forests,
think it was there that I composed.

I have not found anyone
who feels or understands my compositions as well as you.

However much you remember me,
my remembrance of you is greater.

Know this secret:
It’s you.
No other woman can fully possess my heart, 
ever. 

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