E V E L Y N   S C H L A G
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TWO POEMS

 

Translated by Karen Leeder

from "Summer Elegies"

 

VIII

 

 

When I tell you the landscapes in
the poems of others always seem bigger

freer ‘that first winter in Wiltshire'
it gives the fields a meaning that stretches

Way back century upon century
When I tell you I am such a slow learner

I need years to learn to see our landscape
You say: That's the way with everything one loves

 And watches for years these dark mountains
We call our own that every evening seem to sit

 Differently against those behind it's like that
With you it's like that with the Alps whose weight

 We sense even here where the fruit trees
Are froth in May and remember the many harvests

 Remember your figure dressed in black
Which I still cannot draw even in black

 

 

n e x t

 

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