Midstream

Drifting down with the rafts,
in the lighter grey of the strange
shore, in a
splendour, which withdraws, in the grey
of slanting surfaces, light
shot at us from mirrors.

The Baptist’s head
lay on its torn brow,
a hand with loose bluish
nails clawing
the ragged hair.

When I loved you, restless
your heart, the food on the beating
fire, your mouth, which opened,
open, the river
was a rain and flew
with the herons, leaves
fell and filled its bed.

We bent over numbed
fish, the cricket’s song,
clad in scales, crossed
the sand from the foliage
of the bank, we had come
to sleep, Noman
circled the bed, Noman
extinguished the mirrors, Noman
will wake us
in our time.

Translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead

In the four years between the appearance of his first collection of poems in 1961 and his death at the age of forty-eight, Johannes Bobrowski gained lasting international recognition as the outstanding East German poet of his time. He received major literary awards for his poetry and fiction in Austria, Switzerland, East and West Germany. The first selection of his poems in English translation – Shadow Land, 1966 – was greeted with enthusiasm by critics and readers alike, and was rapidly reprinted. A second selection, From the Rivers, appeared in 1975.

Shadow Lands demonstrates the range of Bobrowski’s poetic achievement by bringing together all the poems which Ruth and Matthew Mead have been able to translate. It revises and consolidates their earlier selections, adding some fifty new poems. Michael Hamburger discusses the background and special qualities of Bobrowski’s work in his introductory essay.