POEMS by Meret Oppenheim   Translated by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & Anselm Spoerri
I feel how my eye turns towards the forests and the moon. I feel my compass pointing towards the nourishing proverbs. But my beautiful crocodile. My crocodile out of heart, Where does your pride go ? Up there in that garden There stand my shadows That cool my back. They stand in that garden They fight about old bread And crow like cockerels. Today I want to visit them Today I want to greet them And count their noses. For you, against you Throw all the stones behind you And let the walls loose. To you, on you For one hundred singers above you the hoofs run loose. I delight in my mushrooms I am the first guest in the house And let the walls loose. The dew on the rose Who touched it before Before the night ? She kept her pale flesh Her wax Black and white One sees her again in the clouds Eating marzipan. Forsaken, forgotten So black on the shore of oats. I do not want to measure the time, that invented this pain. The yellow waves cut The new net in two. They come, go and say: The poor miscellany ! Loyal captain Tell me Show me the place in the clouds that the wing of the swallow opened The valley of waves in the goddess' hair The green lights in the forest Here it is night Evil brooms kill the kobolds No wheel turns anymore. Darkness does not know itself Nor does it ask It is a fist within a fist That no one sees. The sea lies frozen on the beach The statues fall unconscious to the ground A thousand flashes of lightning are looking desperately for an exit Knives fly like birds through the air. Nothing more to hear Nothing to see Nothing to feel. Whoever sees her white fingers, is willing to transform themselves. Everybody sheds their skin to offer themselves to the new world. All know that no ship will bring her back but the horn of plenty waves. Finally ! Freedom ! The harpoons fly. The rainbow is floating in the streets, Only overshadowed by the distant humming of the giant-bees Everyone loses everything, which they, oh so often, have overflown in vain. But: Genevieve: Stiff Standing on her head Two meters above the ground Without arms. Her son Realm of Pain: Wrapped into her hair. Small fountain. I repeat : small fountain. Wind and cries in the distance. Weak, weaker, left. The living to the left. The dead ahead. The stubborn will approach soon. Who whistles once, does not belong here. He will be sifted, respected, And nine and well slaughtered, And at last the hairs are empty.