Collective Confinement
Mathilda translated a grip of sonnets outta German for the first time (competently, anyway) into English. I asked her if I could post one to the page, and she said sure, but wouldn't tell me which I should put up. I told her I would put up the wrong one, and indeed I have. I can intuit these things.
They are crammed in narrow cages
Like animals who bend raw against the bars,
And those who are homesick lie on the floor
Almost afraid of the sound of their voices.
They wither away and their blood grows slow,
Only a black stream of poison leaks from their mouths
Which searches for and etches into a neighbor’s open wound —
The prisoners are not well.
The prisoners are all sick.
They grow deaf and mute and blind,
They hate themselves because they are so miserably alone.
Because they sank into the chaos of ego,
Because great proximity makes the face of a friend raw and ugly,
Because everyone tramples over everyone to sit and eat and gloat.
Like animals who bend raw against the bars,
And those who are homesick lie on the floor
Almost afraid of the sound of their voices.
They wither away and their blood grows slow,
Only a black stream of poison leaks from their mouths
Which searches for and etches into a neighbor’s open wound —
The prisoners are not well.
The prisoners are all sick.
They grow deaf and mute and blind,
They hate themselves because they are so miserably alone.
Because they sank into the chaos of ego,
Because great proximity makes the face of a friend raw and ugly,
Because everyone tramples over everyone to sit and eat and gloat.
Mathilda hosts the podcast @ProleSound. She also speaks like five languages and like really not that long ago produced a giant youtube video called A Poetics of Empire: Antiracist Pedagogy and Difficult Poetry, which she is much too modest to mention in a three line bio, and indeed it wouldn't have appeared if it wasn't the editor writing it now.
This poem was translated from German, which is what they speak in Germany, and by a guy who was in jail a lot named Ernst Toller. She actually translated a whole grip of these sonnets, and they're in a Google Doc that's linked over here. Other people have translated this guy into English before, but she's the first one to do it good.
This poem was translated from German, which is what they speak in Germany, and by a guy who was in jail a lot named Ernst Toller. She actually translated a whole grip of these sonnets, and they're in a Google Doc that's linked over here. Other people have translated this guy into English before, but she's the first one to do it good.