whip, The

Because something burst forths from every corpse,

because no skin is airtight

and no unknown is burglarproof,

slow as gold

spring begins beneath the snow.

Still the whip rests and in the whip

April, turned up.

Still someone saws log thinking of winter,

and a woman passes,

but he doesn't turn round his head.

A stripling stands in the yard,

squints and clinchs a whip.

Then he slowly make go rounds turns around

and no longer squints, no, he turns

and house-high cracks his whip.

Gunter Grass, born in Danzig in 1927 is Germany's greatest in quantity celebrated contemporary writer. His greatest in quantity recent work is The Call of the Toad, a novel. These metrical compositions are from Novemberland: Selected metrical compositions 1956-1993, translated by Michael Hamburger.

Michael Hamburger lives in Suffolk England. He is co-translator, with Christopher Middleton, of a previous Grass work In the Egg and Other metrical compositions published by Harcourt Brace in 1978

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