'D'apres Caspar David Friedrich'. Photo: Carlo Chiopris

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

what's in a translation? 2

Girl Disappointed in Love

With mercury we measure pain
as we measure the heat of bodies and air;
but this is not how to discover our limits--
you think you are the center of things.
If you could only grasp that you are not:
the center is He,
and He, too, finds no love---
why don't you see?
The human heart--what is it for?
Cosmic temperature. Heart. Mercury.

Official translation Jerzy Peterkiewicz


Girl Disappointed in Love

Often suffering is measured by the line of mercury
Just like the temperature of air or bodies -
But you need a different gage of its dimensions…
(Yet you’re too much an axis of your own affairs).

If you could grasp that you are not their centre
And that the One who is
Also finds no love
If you could manage to see this

What is the human heart for?

The temperature of the cosmos and the human heart – and mercury.

Translation Karolina Stolarska (2010)

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